Untie the Knot
by katherine-with-a-k
Summary: COMPLETE! Follow behind the scenes in Anne's House of Dreams; from their Wedding Day to their Wedding Night. Please note chapter ratings will vary from K to M.
1. Chapter 1

**Have you got the patience of Gilbert Blythe? Because I'm going behind the scenes of Anne's House of Dreams -all the way to their wedding night and beyond... **

**Quotes from the book will be the starting point and hopefully the finishing point too -but in between I hope to make you laugh and sigh.**

**-I have mentioned my previous stories in these chapters as well, so please give them a read too! And as always I'd love to know your thoughts, everyone has their own ideas about Anne and Gil's first night together, I would love to know yours!**

**Please note: ratings for chapters vary from K - M**

_**With love and gratitude to L.M. Montgomery, everything is hers, only this idea is mine.**_

"_Anne was always romantic, you know," said Marilla apologetically._

"_Well married life will most likely cure her of that," Mrs Rachel responded comfortingly._

_from chapter three, The Land of Dreams Among; Anne's House of Dreams_

**Chapter One: Miss Anne Shirley is Surprised **

**K+**

"So now we come to it."

Rachel Lynde put down her sewing and pierced the needle into the pin-cushion so decidedly it gave a little 'pop'. She lay the last napkin precisely atop the ones completed underneath, each one a square of bleached Irish linen embroidered in the palest shade of blue. "Now, Anne..." she began, with a wide serious stare.

Sitting between the two was Marilla, who now reached for the pile of pretty cloth and pulled it swiftly toward her, examining Rachel's work as if the King himself would be dabbing his royal countenance upon one, "You know, Rachel, I think perhaps we should place Anne and Gilbert's initials on these..."

Rachel's wide eyes narrowed at her friend. "I see very well what you're trying to do Marilla Cuthbert -but go right ahead, ruin your eyesight, and you'll be ruining those napkins into the bargain..." she said in exasperation.

Anne smiled indulgently at the two, in this she took Rachel's part, but it would need saying rather softly; for it seemed there was nothing Marilla would not do for her first Green Gables wedding.

"The plain scalloped edges are already so sweet, and," Anne said, her brows rising slightly, "as Jane herself remarked, I must be quite resigned to the simple things in life now." She placed her pale, slender hand upon the brown, worn one. "You mustn't fuss on them anymore, Marilla, it's really not necessary..."

"A lot of things aren't necessary-" Marilla did not address Anne as she spoke this.

"And what may _be_ isn't always easy. Which brings me again to what I wanted to speak to _you_ about, Anne dear."

"What is it, Rachel?"

Anne wondered what was left of her simple little wedding to be discussed; the venue was settled come the rain or the sun, as were the number of invitations, her trousseau, her gifts, her flowers, everything, _everything_ had been picked up, peered at, considered and rearranged. When Gilbert had joked that the two of them run off and elope Anne had laughed off the romantic gesture -but now it seemed quite a practical alternative. She took another sip of the iced tea they were also considering as a beverage for the wedding breakfast -it needed more mint- she would have to remember that. Fortunately Mrs Rachel waited for Anne to swallow before she answered her, lest a fine mist of cold tea spray upon the sewing.

"Sex," the widow announced into the room.

Anne could not have been more startled if Rachel had declared war! And the look upon her face said she was readying for battle.

Marilla scraped her chair back rudely and grasped at the napkins. "The light's no good for such fine work, I'll have to go to the sewing room."

"You'll do no such thing, Marilla Cuthbert, we agreed that this was necessary-" Marilla winced at Rachel's words, unable to meet Anne's eyes. "Take that blessed chair to the west window if you will, there's still plenty of sun in that spot -but if you don't manage to align your stitches don't expect _me_ to unpick 'em all!"

By this stage the blaze upon Anne's face was complete, she stared at her tall glass of tea, sliding her hand up and down it distractedly, then stopped, as Rachel eyed her again.

"Yes, sex, Anne. I can tell by your face you're familiar with the term."

Anne shot her a startled look -the countless touches, kisses, embraces she and Gilbert had delighted in, crammed into her altogether too hot, too full head. To say nothing of the night Marilla had been taken ill and Anne and Rachel had been obliged to stay the night at the Blythes; and she in Gilbert's own bed! Did Rachel have some inkling? Anne wasn't sure who she wanted to escape more, herself or Marilla.

"Rachel," she managed to say at last, "this _really_ isn't necess..."

"Oh, but it most certainly _is_, my girl. We would not be doing our duty by you to see you walk down that aisle in two weeks time still having the same foolish notions of romance you surely do now. Of course, Marilla here, should be having this conversation with you, but seeing as she-" Rachel stopped in order to decide how best to proceed, "-since _I_ was long married and birthed ten children, it only made sense that such ...information should best come from me."

Anne looked over at Marilla who was attempting to thread her needle with the utmost concentration. While Rachel, having got her difficult introduction out of the way settled comfortably into the kitchen chair and sniffed a little complacently, before topping up her iced tea.

"Could do with some more mint," she said to herself, but Anne was quick to respond.

"Oh what a good idea Rachel, I knew it was missing something. I'll just go and..."

Rachel put her glass down with a determined tap.

"You and Marilla. Why, you're both as bad as each other. What on earth did you say to the girl when her monthly visitor arrived?"

"Her monthly...?" The pale blue thread fell from Marilla's lap and spooled across the floor. "Rachel, if you are going to speak about such _topics _I hope it won't be couched in such ridiculous terms!"

"Far be it from me to interfere, Marilla," it was just as well Rachel's back was all but turned from the woman sitting at the west window, for she had a look on her face that was not to be seen. "But I pride myself on speaking my mind. And I will speak it now, though it may be uncomfortable and embarrassing -why to _talk_ of it is almost like the _act_ itself."

"I'm getting a bigger needle," Marilla declared.

"I'm getting the mint," Rachel countered.

Anne stayed where she was, rooted to her chair, hand stuck to the glass, unable to move; and yet realising that even if she had the power in her legs to run away from such a conversation, this was just going to be one of those occasions where one -what? Took it like a man? Got it over and done with? Held your nose and swallowed it down? Her maiden heart gave a sickening lurch.

_Uncomfortable_? _Embarrassing_? So it was true.

Jane had said so herself, while Rachel and Marilla displayed Anne's trousseau to Mrs Harmon Andrews. The two had inched away from the parlour where Anne's trunk of treasures was housed, and skipped off into the garden like girls of yesterday.

"Your negligee is so delicately done, Anne. I really believe I couldn't buy it's equal," Jane said with an air of bestowing a great compliment on her dearest friend. "I find it strange," she continued, picking at a stray leaf overhead, "that _we_ should go to such great lengths for them, while they -_men_- just do whatever they please."

So began the unsettling talk of the millionaire's wife and the marriage bed.

"Of course Sydney is a dear, and so attentive and thoughtful in _almost_ every way." -Anne knew now what that 'almost' did not include- "But the whole episode is just so ...uncomfortable. If it wasn't blasphemous I would question God's design in having a man lying all over a woman -you can't _help_ your legs coming apart." The leaf in her hand was now picked to pieces and scattered away on the lawn. "Not that you'd want to, of course," she added.

They were called back to the house, so that Jane might admire the lace on Anne's pillowslips, and when Anne caught sight of her nightgown again it was no longer the sweet girlish thing it once had been to her eyes.

The view had changed from where Diana Wright stood too.

"Oh Anne!" Diana declared, her eyes and mouth the same large O's. "I can tell you, because I can tell you everything." Anne swallowed hard in readiness for what was bound to be an extraordinary revelation, and wished her bosom-friend might be a little more discreet, if not for her sake, at least for Fred. "It was just so _embarrassing_ to see Fred like ...that. To see my quiet, sturdy, handsome Fred turn completely to jelly; as quivering and red as anything you might see at a Sunday school picnic! And the little noises -now you know Fred's not much for small talk, but he makes these little noises -almost squeaks!" Here she attempted the sound; it had the rhythmic pitch of a child jumping on a rusty bed, "But that's not the worst of it." Diana gripped Anne on her upper arms with a look upon her face as though she was about to tell one of her gruesome Story Club tales. "The worst is when the squeaking stops. And then he sort of makes this sound -like he stubbed his toe upon a table leg- and then ...he plants his face headlong into my pillow."

It looked as if for one awful moment Diana meant to act this out too, but then thought the better of it.

"Oh, Anne. I was so embarrassed for the poor man, I was just real glad I couldn't see his face."

Anne thought she could never look Fred in the face again either, and when the Wrights had visited she invited Fred to walk along wide open spaces and uncluttered paths lest she should hear the noise imagined in her head.

Presently Mrs Rachel strode briskly up the swept clear path of Green Gables, a bouquet of mint in her hands, which was rinsed and patted dry with equal briskness and dunked into the pitcher of tea.

"I don't know what's keeping Marilla so long with that needle, there's a bunch of 'em right here on this pin-cushion. She does stuff them overmuch though, wouldn't surprise me if these ones were all bent from trying to get in!"

Anne's cheeks blazed once more, to Rachel's approval, for she was one for colour and snap in a girl. "Oh Gilbert'll be real glad to have you at last, Anne," -then she remembered herself and narrowed her eyes, "and though I do not pretend that my Thomas had much to compare to your Gilbert, when it comes to the 'having' I can't imagine there's much scope for the imagination, as you like to say." She paused now and took a drink of her tea, and it was clear that Rachel's thoughts were no longer on Anne's marriage, but on her own. "Not that it's a terrible business mind you, but neither is it this "making love" like those awful novels would have you believe. And pay no mind to those who'd say it's just for procreation, come to that, for you may take it from me I would recall the exact hour we came to make our children if it were."

"So much for what it is not, Rachel," said Marilla, suddenly appearing in the entrance to the kitchen, "it's time, I think, to speak of what it is."

"Well now when it comes right down to it, perhaps I don't know after all. It's a mystery, is what it is, Anne," said Rachel, "so's of course we're not supposed to know."

"It's a sacred act," Marilla said with finality.

Now Rachel bestowed her big-eyed look on the confirmed spinster; for it wasn't for Marilla to say ...and yet she did say it so well. The wife of forty-one years contented herself with a small amendment, "It's an act of faith -on your part, I'd say ...and an act of love -on his part- I suppose."

Anne smiled at the women in front of her with a bursting affection.

"You'll be just fine, my dear. And besides which he's a _doctor!" _Rachel gave Anne an emphatic nod, "So he's sure to know what's what-"

"-Ah, Rachel," Marilla shoved the napkins under Rachel's nose, "why don't you help me choose a stitch for the embroidery. You mentioned a satin stitch I think, but I thought a cross stitch might be pretty..."

"Cross stitch!" Mrs Rachel blurted, "this isn't some child's sampler-"

Anne placed kisses upon the good ladies cheek and...

"_...laughed and slipped away to Lover's Lane, where Gilbert found her; and neither of them seemed to entertain much fear, or hope, that their married life would cure them of romance."_

**You would think this is where I would _start_ this chapter! Don't worry there is so much more to come...**


	2. Chapter 2

_"__Roy Gardner wouldn't have done at all. I can see that now, though I was horribly disappointed at the time. You know Anne, you really did treat Roy very badly."_

_from chapter three, the Land of Dreams Among; Anne's House of Dreams_

_**Chapter Two: Mrs Philippa Blake is Surprising **_

_**K+**_

"Not so bad as I treated Gil," said Anne thoughtfully.

Something like a shadow fell over Anne's face, just as her room in the east gable gave way to dusk. She swung her legs onto her bed and hugged at her knees; the sun seemed to set with a sigh.

"Well whatever your methods, they certainly worked," said Philippa Blake, and she perched at the foot of Anne's bed like a cat, all the more ready to pounce. "After all, _both_ men wanted to marry you!"

"You heartless minx -you know I never wished to hurt either of them." Anne's eyes darkened like the sky outside. "But Gil... I love him so entirely, Phil, I can't even recall the girl I used to be -who snubbed and pretended, and..." -_that wretched day at_ _Patty's Place_- "refused him." She hugged at her knees a little tighter.

Philippa was having none of it. "Oh, you'll _make it up_ to him, honey. He's just bound to be expecting _that_!" She flopped back on Anne's bed and squealed.

Anne's eyes ignited, she rocked up to her knees and bent over her friend, gripping her lightly round the throat. "Philippa! Just what do you mean? I know it's on the tip of your forked little tongue -so spit it out -or I'll make you!"

"Well, _Miss_ Shirley, if _you_ want to know _I _won't tell..." Phil answered saucily.

Anne released her grip and tweaked at Phil's nose. "There's nothing you can tell me anyway, ol' _Mrs_ Blake," she laughed, "I've had more accounts of _making it up,_ as you put it, to fill a dozen of those novels Mrs Lynde pretends she doesn't read."

"Then she won't mind if I don't return the one I nabbed from under her sewing basket!" Phil laughed gleefully, "since it doesn't exist -she can't miss it." She adjusted the little cameo at her neck and smoothed back her hair with an innocent air.

"Oh, I never could beat you for bare-faced meanness." Anne laughed.

"I might check with Gil on that point, I'm sure he would disagree." Phil quipped.

"Don't you dare," Anne laughed again, though without the same enthusiasm. She sat back once more, resting her chin on her knees. "But Phil, what did you mean, about making it up to him? I mean really?"

Anne's face was at once so open and sincere it was all Phil could do not to kiss her cheeks as she would her own babies. Her answer was not put so delicately. "I mean that Gilbert Blythe has been _passionately_ in love with you since you wore your hair in two long braids."

Phil could not have known that a vegetable more or less the same size and colour as those braids was now on Anne's mind, but her response might have hinted at it. "If anyone is prone to passion it's _me._"

"Exactly!" said Phil, with a flourish.

Anne traced a finger along the seam of her quilt. She knew, without wanting to show that she knew, _exactly_ what Phil was referring to. And after that night she spent at the Blythes -the night Gilbert seemed to know how deep her passions really ran; knew it better that she knew herself- what could he be expecting on their wedding night? She pulled at a thread on one of the gingham patches. "And was it the same for you, Phil? After pursuing Jo like that he might have thought-"

"Pursuing! An Island girl _would_ put it that way ...I just helped him on a little." She flashed her bright eyes brazenly; but Anne would stay her course, like the stitches straight and true upon her bed.

"Quibble all you want over the word, Phil dear, but you know full well what I mean -did, did Jonas have certain ...expectations?" she finished quietly.

"You mean did I disappoint him-?"

"No! Of course not, I only meant.."

"Well..." Phil sat up again and scooped her knees to herself, like a mirror to Anne. "Perhaps I did." She twisted her grandmother's ring so the stone sat straight, then saw Anne's eyes, so big and round they might have been its match. "You're surprised, Anne." Anne Shirley's face had always been a book, but a trusted comforting read for all that. "No, don't pretend otherwise, darling. I can see plain as plain that my answer's not what you expected. I know I come across so worldly wise -but it's spread thin and shallow like a crust, not all the way to the core, like you. It happens I can't help that, anymore than you can help that divinely red hair. But I do feel things and fear things just the same, you know, and I _was_ worried about the first night Jo and I spent together. I didn't sleep a wink for days beforehand."

Anne was quiet. She _had_ to ask -the question lodged in her throat almost painfully. But to say it … she must, she would. "And so... how was it? What was it like, Phil?"

Phil laughed, partly in fun and partly she owned, in mockery of what had indeed happened. "I wouldn't know about my first night, Anne," Anne had a look on her face as though Phil had caught her in some cruel trick, but her friend soon put that to rights. "I fell asleep. Dead to the world. Dead to Jo. I nearly died again when I woke up and realised what I had done."

_Phil? Philippa Blake, as was the infamous Philippa Gordon? Beauty? Wit? Incorrigible flirt? Fell asleep?_

"Oh, go ahead and laugh, I know you want to."

Anne needed no permission, she was in a ball, trying to smother the giggles erupting from her at an uncontrollable rate. "Oh Phil. I'm not... oh, Phil I'm not laughing-"

"Oh, you're not, are you?"

"-I'm not laughing at you -it's just, it's just..." Anne could not put it into words, but the feeling coursing through her now was something very much like relief.

"Well, we'll see if you're still laughing in a week's time." It was Phil's turn to tweak Anne on that lovely nose of hers, but the sudden look on Anne's face stopped the mischievous hand.

"Please don't say that, Phil. Don't wish disappointment on me. The expectation is already so great. Sometimes I feel it can only end ...badly."

It was Philippa's turn to be surprised. "Since when have you felt that way -that it will all go so wrong?" Her brow bearing the tiny crease of concern, both for Anne, and herself, for doubting she had the wisdom that might help.

"Well, I don't know," Anne thought, she stared off into the sky through her window, it was that indeterminate colour where one couldn't tell if it was day or night that approached. "Perhaps when a friend has visited, and the talk turns to babies and husbands, and at the time I suppose I understand, but then they leave and I feel so dreadful -like I'll never be able to get it right, that I'll lack the patience to get it right, or -even more horribly- that I _do_ get it right, at least in the eyes of others, other friends, other wives; but it just leaves me feeling so... discontent."

Phil listened to her friend unburden her heart, and said nothing.

"And then I feel so confused, Phil, so _pressured_ to get it right. Gilbert has loved me for so long, you know." Anne seemed to slump under all that expectation.

"Yes. I do know, honey," The mother smiled at the maid, with a depth of understanding not possible of the truly shallow. "But tell me now, Anne, when are the times when you _don't_ feel that way? -for you just wouldn't be Anne if you didn't have days like those too."

"Oh," Anne took a deep breath and unfurled like a flower, with garlands of night in her eyes. "When I'm with Gil, of course. When I'm with him -whenever I'm with him- I feel like everything is just the way it's supposed to be, but more than that -that it's exciting just to be with him. Just to breathe with him. And sometimes -don't laugh, for I know full well I'm no young girl anymore- but sometimes it's like he can even make me forget how to do that."

Phil leaned over, brushed away a red curl and kissed her friend. "I don't have to tell you of course, that _that_ is all that matters -that it's all that _ever_ mattered."

"Perhaps you do though, Phil. Oh, say it to me again." Anne clasped her hand, and felt her pearl circlet chink against Philippa's topaz.

"All that matters is how you feel when you're with him, Anne. And you know I might tease you about Roy, but that's only because you're so deliciously fun to tease -not because I mean it. You and Gilbert _belong_ together, and whether you fall asleep like yours truly, or break that big ol' bed he bought-"

"Phil!"

"-you can at least find contentment in the knowledge... that you didn't marry someone who is _prettier_ than you are!"

They fell against the pillows laughing, until tears darkened their lashes and dampened their cheeks. When laughter turned to silence and night claimed the sky, they were still holding hands.

After a while Anne looked sidelong at her friend and said, "So that's the secret of contentment, is it?" Philippa Blake obviously thought so, for no one could say that she married for looks. But Roy had been more than a pretty face, of course he had! Though curiously when Anne came to think of him nothing else came to mind. She stood up and went to the window, closing the curtains on a moon that looked as though it winked at her.

Philippa rolled to her side and rested against her arm, enjoying the pleasures of idle talk. Soon Jonas must appear and request their appearance in the kitchen; she imagined his dear face peeking round the door -quizzical and apologetic- and she smiled. "Well what do they say… 'that it's just as easy to fall for _plain_ man as a _rich_ one?'"

"I think you've muddled that up a little, dear,"Anne laughed.

"Well, Euclid was always my first love, honey, I never really cared for all those great works of literature, not like you, Queen Anne."

Philippa left the bed and went to join Anne at the window. They stood before each other now and could still see those girls; whose hopes and passions were so wonderfully undiscovered.

"That may be, you mysterious creature, but I think your version sums up our time at Redmond – the part _not_ concerned with sonnets and geometry, the _important_ part I mean- rather perfectly."

She was about to return a kiss to Phil's cheek, when Philippa pounced.

"Let me see if I understand you correctly, you're saying that _you_ fell for the pretty one?" Anne could almost see her tail twitch.

"He was rich too, don't forget." Though she'd nearly forgot herself; there _was_ more to Roy than his looks after all!

"Which means that I fell for the ...just what are you implying about my Reverend Jo?"

"I'll say plenty about that angel you married, Mrs Blake." Anne kissed her now, then went to her mirror to tidy her hair. "But I've nothing more to say about Roy. And he'd have nothing to say about me, either-"

"Oh, certainly. If one were to say the word 'redhead' to him now, his first thought would probably be that nasty Classics professor..." Phil said, pinching a silk rose from Anne's dresser and placing it in her hair.

Anne pretended to glare, but found she hadn't the heart, she was happy for Roy -the way we all are when our own happiness no longer depends upon theirs. "So..."

_"He has recovered I understand." smiled Anne._

"_Oh yes. He is married and his wife is a sweet little thing and they're perfectly happy. Everything works together for the good. Jo and the Bible say that, and they are pretty good authorities."_

** Well, who can resist one last laugh at their ex? If you're waiting for romance, don't worry, Anne & Gilbert are about to meet on the eve before their wedding. (_the rating will be turned up a little.)  
_**


	3. Chapter 3

**The difficult third chapter... not in terms of writing but in finding the time to write. Christmas and fanfic are not a good mix -but now the summer stretches out before me and the chapters should come a little faster. Thank you for your patience- Gilbert would be impressed!**

**As always, my unending gratitude to L.M. Montgomery, everything is hers, only this idea is mine.**

"_When I left your gate and walked home I was the happiest boy in the world. Anne had forgiven me."_

"_I think you had the most to forgive. I was an ungrateful little wretch – and after you had really saved my life on the pond …I don't deserve the happiness that has come to me."_

_Gilbert laughed and clasped tighter the girlish hand that wore his ring._

_from chapter three, the Land of Dreams Among; Anne's House of Dreams_

**Chapter Three: Dr Gilbert Blythe Plans A Surprise  
**

**T**

His bright hazel eyes stared deeply into hers, as eager, open and adoring as ever. Much else might have changed since the day they first met, but the way Gilbert Blythe looked at Anne Shirley never had. She remembered he had that same look in his eyes on the evening they walked to Green Gables for the first time, hand in hand. How reassuring and pleasant it had been to feel Gilbert's strong fingers and broad palm enclose hers; so different to the clammy grip of Charlie Sloane and the soft dimpled touch of Diana. He seemed to hold her as though expecting she might slip away from him at any moment. And if Anne's heart had beat a little faster as they lingered at her gate, if her words tumbled out excitedly before the moon could rise too high, it was only because there was at last someone in her life who had as many plans and ambitions as she did.

Anne gave Gilbert's hand a tender squeeze now, in shared remembrance of that time when they first became friends. Though even lovers recall things differently. Gilbert might have described it as 'happiness' but there had been so much more to the feelings that thrilled though his body that day. Her forgiveness had been like a balm to the boy's hurt; and if he held her hand so tightly it was simply because he wanted to conceal how he trembled, how he wanted with every step to press Anne's fingers to his lips and see her blush again the way she had when she offered her hand to him in apology; her bottom lip bitten and her lashes lowered, unable to meet his gaze. If Anne had looked up in that moment she would have seen a desire, a bliss, and a joy that burned bright in his eyes. Eyes that drunk greedily at the sight of her. To know what she looked like when she smiled at him! Looked up at him! Blushed because of him! There was so much more green in her eyes than he imagined, and her beautiful nose was the proud possessor of not six but seven perfect freckles. Would there ever be a day when he might place a kiss upon each one?

He could think these things, imagine his lips pressing stolen kisses over every part of her face and her hands, even while they chatted enthusiastically about some article that Stella Maynard had sent about an improvement society in Boston. It was not particularly hard for Gilbert Blythe to achieve this presence of mind -there had been countless days since he met Anne when he had concealed the emotions that stormed within him. There had been only one occasion -after saving the life of the "ungrateful wretch" on the pond- when he had cracked. Anne's cold refusal to forgive Gilbert pierced him to the heart, and his pain and disappointment were unmistakeable. His face first white and then red as a stifled cry of anguish cut at his throat. He left Anne abruptly on the bank of the pond; an excruciating mix of adrenalin, fear and desire taking hold of him as he yanked at the oars. He railed against her with every stroke, but too soon this rancour was turned against himself, for making so obvious how much he cared for her; for her friendship and her forgiveness.

Never. Ever. Ever. Would he let her into his life. Would he look for her. Would he long for her. Too soon he had reached the other side of the pond, and after securing the dory to a post on the bank with a vicious knot, stalked home and went to his room without a word. Was it only this morning he had wondered lazily if he might see Anne Shirley when he took his neighbour's boat out that afternoon? If he had time away from his duties on the farm he sometimes spied the pretty quartet of Anne, Diana, Jane and Ruby in the midst of their girlish adventures, always discovering or re-enacting some marvel. Ruby had mentioned after prayer group the previous week, their passion for the realm of Camelot, hinting as much that a Lancelot would add so much more to their fun.

Gilbert's eyes then fell to the copy of Tennyson on his desk and he glared at it hatefully. Romance, poetry. There was _no_ place for them in the real world. And that exasperating redhead had proved as much by almost drowning herself. Anne and poetry: how satisfying to cast them both from his life. If he had his old copy of 'Bingen on the Rhein' he would have rent it in two. Yet even then the words would still exist within him -what unfairness was that; that the words could not be forgot? "_There's_ _another, _not_ a sister."_ No. Not a sister, never to be a sister, never to be anything, ever. He searched for his pocketbook and finding it housed within the long pants he wore for Sunday best, shook its contents over his bed. And there amongst the coppers, fishhooks and old notes, a pressed circle of pale pink tissue fluttered out -it lay on his bed like a scar.

Then came the grief; unbidden, uncontrollable, laying hot salty tears upon the faded paper rose that had once adorned Anne Shirley. He wiped his face against his bare arm impatiently, angry at giving any more of himself to her. Diana Barry had told him after that miserable day at school when he had made a lifelong enemy of Anne that "_an iron had entered her soul_". Well, today it had entered Gilbert Blythe's -he would never care, never notice, never think of Anne again. And he took the paper flower and shredded it -as he wished he might have shredded his own sixteen year old heart- into a thousand tiny pieces. But the pain was not diminished; the smaller it became the larger the sobs that forced their way from his throat. Now he just wanted it gone. He snatched at the rose's remnants and walked down to the kitchen in wary steps lest he alert his mother to his presence; for even she could not refrain from asking about his red eyed, white faced appearance.

Mrs Blythe would wonder at the scraps of pink confetti she found in his room later that day. But she did not press her son for answers, though she sensed something had suddenly wounded him. Gilbert was too much like his father in this respect -he would not be helped, he would only endure. And his mother could only watch and wish she might help her son to bear it. Gilbert heard her bustling about in the kitchen, singing a song to herself as she stirred preserves on the stovetop, blocking his way to the fire. Quietly he detoured to the front door and without a destination in mind ran out into the secret paths of Avonlea until the ache in his body equalled that in his heart. In that moment he believed that he would never cry again, and he slumped down dejectedly to the ground.

Another boy with a more poetic soul might have scattered the paper petals to the winds and let his dreams fly with them and land where they may. Gilbert buried them. Scooping up the rich red earth in his hands, he dropped the tiny fragments into a hole, pressing them down and concealing them with a dull empty heart. He did not leave it as a tomb, however, marking his sorrow with a stone. Gilbert was a farmer's son; he simply left it lying there. Like a quiet possibility. Like a seed.

And here she was now, the culmination of all those years and all that waiting, standing before him with love in her eyes, about to promise her heart and her body into his keeping. A look that was as pained as it was joyful swept over his face.

"Gil, you almost looked as though you would cry," Anne said.

He thought that he might, but the new joy overcame the old grief, freely and happily; for Gilbert never had to learn to be blithe, he never needed to. He was made of it.

"As a matter of fact I was remembering something I once longed to do to you many many years ago..." he murmured suggestively.

"If you mention slates..."

"What? No, nothing so heartless," he laughed, "I just remembered those seven little freckles you used to have on your nose and how much I longed to kiss each one."

"But I don't have any freckles now...!"

Gilbert smirked at her little vanity, "Well, I don't know, I think I see one..."

Anne released herself from his hold and rushed her hand to her nose with unsettled surprise. _A freckled bride!_ Oh, would her beauty-hungry heart be denied every little dream?

Gilbert gently cupped her face and tilted it up towards him, "Now let me see, hold still now and..." He pressed his lips to the tip of her nose, she closed her eyes and smiled again. "Gone," he whispered, then pulled away as though he meant to study her face. A sudden thought of what she would look like when he lay in bed with her shot through him violently. The days and the hours when he could withhold his desires from Anne, were fading away like the last rays of this last day. He swallowed hard and continued. "Now where were those other six?"

"Here," she said, and pointed to her bottom lip. He kissed her there and waited.

"Here," she said, now pointing to the hollow at her throat veiled in a web of white filmy lace. He kissed her there, more hotly, feeling her lengthen her neck to feel more of his mouth upon her. Gilbert drew his hands down to her shoulders, wanting to place the next kiss upon the tender skin by her ear, as he always did when they played this sensual little game with each other. But Anne caught his hands, and grasping them in her own, guided them down to her breasts. They were pressed together in a blue lawn shirtwaist, rising and falling as though they could not remain bound for very long.

"Here," she said softly.

"I'll have to take your word for that, Miss Shirley," Gilbert responded huskily, the darkening skies concealing his touch from anyone who might pass by. He cupped her firmly in his hands and felt their fullness press into him. Her skirts brushed against him teasingly, and she discerned a fullness all his own.

"And I shall be happy to oblige come tomorrow," she said, just as he bent his head down to place a kiss upon each breast.

Gilbert looked up quickly, his hands about her face again, seeking out a look in her eyes that would tell him whether she really meant those words or not. He _had_ to ask her. Ask if she really _would_ give herself to him in happiness, and _only _in happiness -for he could not bear her to pretend. He had heard enough of women who lay beneath their men with grim forbearance; and it might be that once all the barriers that had come between them were removed, Anne would not be so open and willing as she was in these tantalising, stolen moments. Moments which always had to stop. And as agonising as it was to pull himself away from such a willing maiden, it would be nothing to the torment of seeing her flinch or hide from him when she was his wife.

He thought of himself as the kind of man who would wait, who valued a women's desire as much as his own (as a doctor he had seen enough of the brutal consequences endured by wives and girls whose voice had been ignored.) But such intellectualising would not equal the physical reality, when Anne would lie with him for the first time. If he had to hold himself back, he wanted to know it now.

"Do you mean that, Anne? Tell me truly that you mean it." His voice had never sounded so taut and raw before.

Now a look of joy mixed with pain was on Anne's face; to see him doubt her desire, and to know how much it mattered to him. She placed her hands on his face too, and saw those eyes; so open, so vulnerable and beautiful, and hoped he recognised the same look shining back at him.

"I want you so much, Gilbert Blythe, that I burn. And the reason I am always putting your hands all over me is not because I know that you won't. It's because you found a fire in me, Gil, and you are the only one who can touch it. I think I told you -when I thought you were going to die- that I knew a part of me would die too. And I cried for you because the world needs a man like you to fight for it, and it would always be a lesser place without you. But I never told you ...that I cried for me, too. Because I knew there was a spark in me would never be known, that would fade and be lost forever."

Her grey eyes swirled with unshed tears now, and she returned one of his hands to her breast again. Beneath all those layers of prim stiff clothing he felt her heart beat violently against the taut hollow of his palm. "I want you Gil, I want you to know all of me." Anne's voice grew quiet and she faltered for a moment, those fears she had that their wedding night might be one of disappointment loomed large. But the look on Gilbert's face, so reassuring and filled with love, gave her all the courage she needed to say this to him now. "That night, in your bed, I wanted you to make love to me … wanted it as never before. I wanted you to lose that control you have over yourself and take me without fear or consequence, but I came to see that it was wrong..."

"No, Anne, it wasn't wrong, but we..."

"It was wrong Gil, not the way you think I mean, for I love you as much as any wife ever could, even God in his Heaven knows that. No, I mean it was wrong for me to expect you to _take_ me like that. I don't want to be taken, and I don't want you to _lose_ yourself." Anne breathed deeply; a sweet minty spice warming his face and burning his lips. "I want to give myself to you, I want you to find yourself in me, for us to be even more when we're together than when we are apart..."

She felt a warm tear fall from his eye and trickle down her hand, and as she blinked they fell from hers too. He brought her fingers to his mouth and kissed the little circlet of his troth.

"Pearls are for tears," he said softly.

They kissed now, and tasted the salt from each other on their lips and tongues; the intimacy was intoxicating. It was a long while before they could speak again.

Then it was time, the last time that they would walk back to Green Gables with Anne Shirley's hand tightly bound in Gilbert's. Only now the talk was of far more grown up things.

"I feel as though, somehow, we are married already," Anne said finally.

"I don't know if our families would be quite so understanding, with all that stitching and stirring being done on our behalf -Marilla would never forgive you- though my father might understand," Gilbert grinned.

"I said something similar a week or so ago," Anne replied, a slight wistful sound to her voice, "though I probably forgot to mention it to you, after being so taken aback by that _little talk_ I was cornered into."

If the sun had still been in the sky Gilbert would have seen that beloved blush on his girl's cheek once again. He chuckled as he remembered Anne's bewildered description of an afternoon's sewing in the Green Gables kitchen turn to tales of sex.

"At least they didn't insist that I attend as well!"

"I wouldn't be surprised if Rachel gave the idea serious consideration, you know how she likes a thing to be done good and proper..."

"-And has ten children to prove it!"

Anne gave a little smile and continued dreamily. "Well, she didn't look too kindly on my idea of a wedding."

"Your idea of a wedding? And here I was thinking there has only ever been one way to have a wedding."

He had heard enough of it these past few months to be rather too knowledgeable on the subject. But Anne was too busy building another castle in the sky to notice his lack of enthusiasm for the subject.

"Oh Gil, I told her that if I could ...I would come to you -just as the sun rose in the sky- and we would stand before each in a cathedral of beech trees and rose blooms and just ...be married."

"_Be_ married?"

"Don't pretend you don't understand me, Gilbert Blythe, I _know_ you know what I mean."

He did know too, he seemed to walk with her amongst the towers of clouds that blanketed the the skies above them. Anne looked up at them now and murmured words of worry that they might bring rain on the morrow -when one's treasured desires ran to the simple wishes of sunshine and a rose-leaf complexion it was hard not to want too much for them. Gilbert's thoughts dwelt on her dreams too. It was such a simple beautiful wish of Anne's to be joined to him like that. It seemed to speak so much about them both, of the perfect precious times when it had just been a girl and a boy and the Island's beauty, and he wanted it almost as much for himself as he wanted it for her. Somehow and soon, he promised himself he would make that day for her. A poor doctor's wife might never know diamond sunbursts and marble halls, but he could give her this.

Gilbert left her at the gate of Green Gables. Neither had said, though both quietly saw, how right it was that Anne make her way to her girlhood home without him. With little more than a chaste kiss, they farewelled like friends; the expectations of tomorrow now weighing too heavily upon them to be able to say more. Both returning to the rooms of their childhood for the last time, with promises in their heart that could only be kept when he became her husband and she became his wife.

**...**

**But not yet... in the next chapter Gilbert and John have a heart to heart, and Marilla has a bigger part to play on the morning of Anne's wedding (did you miss Marilla on the wedding day too?)**

**And to the wonderful people who took the time to review:**

**-no I don't need a certain amount of reviews in order to write, though it is very nice- Christmas was just crazy.**

**-so sorry Cordelia! Hope this mega size chapter makes up for it.**

**-love you too, DrizzyJ!**

**-glad you appreciate the "maturity"**

**-so happy my stories mean a lot to you -that's the reason I write, so thank you!**

**-insubfreak -thanks for the Phil love- she was a joy to write. As for Fred... that was almost too much for me too!**

**And thankyou thankyou thankyou for my loyal Amy, Dannie, Alinya, Raindropcatcher and GoDons -you keep me going and inspire everything I write!**


	4. Chapter 4

**I couldn't find an appropriate quote to begin this chapter but I'm going to put one in anyway, because it's so gorgeous (everybody get out their copy of Anne's House of Dreams and luxuriate in the loveliness immediately) and because if I ever wrote a fanfic from Gilbert's perspective (besides the wedding story it's my favourite thing to read -I'm talking to you, Laurie1!) I would call it 'Island boy'**

"_It was a great relief to find out that she didn't really mean to take the Kingsport man. He was rich to be sure, and Gilbert is poor ...but then he's an Island boy."_

"_He's Gilbert Blythe," said Marilla contentedly. _

_from chapter two, the House of Dreams; Anne's House of Dreams_

**K**

**Chapter Four: Under the Moon...**

"I knew you'd be longer than half an hour!" Gilbert's father called from the porch of the Blythe homestead; the click of the latch on the garden gate heralding his boy's return at last.

He remembered the days when Gilbert used to leap over it, always on the lookout for some secret beauty that others might have walked by every day and never seen. He seemed to have a knack for discovery. There was a time when his father feared that the accomplished young man who made his way toward him now, might never want to return to the smaller joys of Island life. John knew -as he could not fail to know when his own opportunities had been so narrowly defined by the farm- the life Gilbert might have claimed had he chosen to settle elsewhere. But there had only ever been one dream the boy had clung to, and now it was in his grasp he seemed to want for nothing else.

"Sorry, Father!" Gilbert replied, bounding up the steps and sitting himself opposite the older man. They both rested their backs against a porch post, the corner of each softened and worn from the hours the two had spent sitting there together; like little china dogs by a fireplace. "I know I said I wouldn't be long..."

"You don't have to explain, I expect I know where you've been; savouring your last hours as a single man, chasing up all those old haunts..."

Gilbert raised his eyebrows in silent assent, though his face went hot in the cool air of the evening. He _had_ savoured those last sweet moments, but not it seemed, as his father had imagined. Even now his hands burned with the feel of Anne's body -old haunts indeed!

His father, however, recognised the distracted state of the younger man all too well -o_f all the females on God's green earth his boy had to fall for Marilla Cuthbert's girl!_

"She's a fine woman, Gil."

Fine did not begin to describe her; though no higher praise could have come from John Blythe's lips. For that Anne Shirley had been the means of his son's recovery, and the reason they decided to make their home on the Island. The reason too this man, now closer to thirty than twenty, blushed hotly like a love-struck lummox.

Gilbert gave his father a guilty smile. "I had only intended to take a stroll down the lane..." the grin became a grimace, "Aunt Mary Maria..."

"-is the very reason I'm out here now myself!"

The Blythe men laughed and shared a look that needed no explanation. Yet both knew there was still so much more to say; it had been a good long while since Gilbert's father had waited up for him like this.

"Well, I'm glad I found you, even if I have my Aunt to thank for it," Gilbert said, "because I want to thank _you_, Father. A fellow could not have asked for a better man to bring him up, you've given me so..."

"-it's your wedding, tomorrow, Gil, not my wake!" John interjected with a guffaw.

It was plain to see where Gilbert had inherited his sense of humour -his mother would have cried at such a speech.

A mischievous breeze funnelled through the porch, ruffling Gilbert's curls as if he were a little boy again. "Tomorrow," he said, as though the thought had just occurred to him. John quietly sensed his unease and set about working the dirt from the stitches in his boot, searching for words that might help.

"No need to be nervous, Gil, these women-folk-" here he gestured to the brightly lit windows of their house, and all who bustled within "-just like to make a fuss, is all."

He looked up at his son, who was running his palm distractedly over the jolly yellow flower-heads of the shrubs that bordered their home. People said Gilbert was the image of his father; both tall and broad -of shoulder and of smile- they carried themselves with the same blithe spirit. But when John looked at his boy he saw only his wife. It was not just that they shared the same unruly curls and hazel eyes, but an unbounded capacity for goodness, service and love.

"I remember the day I turned my head to see your mother walking down the aisle towards me. Like a little lacy cloud, she was. The wedding ...that's the easy bit. It's marriage you need to be prepared for."

"I'm ready, Father."

Gilbert sat a little taller, squared his shoulders a little wider and John hid a little smirk. He knew only too well what his boy was ready for -ready to become a man in every sense of the word. But was he ready for how much this would depend upon the woman? Sarah had almost died bringing Gilbert into the world and was warned that should she ever bear another child she would likely lose her life. Slowly husband and wife and fallen into a loyal and affectionate companionship, and there was nothing to remind John that he had ever known what it was to be filled with longing. Nothing to remind him at all. Until his child too, came close to death.

How vivid the memories and how close he came to speak of them when his son returned from Redmond broken hearted, exhausted, and losing his fight with the fever. Many times had he stood by Gilbert's sickbed, on the verge of telling his son that a broken heart _could_ mend; that there might be more than one woman he was destined to love. But something always stopped him. John Blythe told himself that it was because such a revelation would disrespect his wife, and he would rather have died himself than diminish her quality in any way. In truth he was afraid to offer this consolation to his dying son because he feared it might not be not true. Sarah Macleod had been John's salvation; a brook in spring time when he had been stranded in frozen waters. But Gilbert knew Anne was meant for him the way he knew the sun would rise at dawn.

_Could a man love a different woman in the same way?_

"I'm glad for you, Gil," John said quietly, "Glad to know I raised a boy who would become a good husband."

Gilbert shifted uncomfortably against the post, with a sinking notion of where this father-son chat was heading.

"Ah ...Father, if you thought you had to give me an anatomy lesson before tomorrow then I feel I should save you the embarrassment. I passed that course many moons ago," he laughed, "with honours, actually!"

"Any fool can make a baby!" John said impatiently, "You're a doctor, you must have seen enough unwanted brats to know that."

Gilbert had, and remembered now the tiny foundlings; motherless and homeless, that had been abandoned on the hospital steps. He could not help but think of his darling girl; how slim the chance that they found each other. The thick bank of cloud above them was pushed away by the growing winds, revealing an all seeing moon. Gilbert looked down at the long shadows it cast on the path in front of him.

John looked up, and saw something too.

"Good time for planting," he said. Gilbert was used to the way their talk always turned to the land; the farm was just as much a part of his father as his arm or his heart. "Yep," he continued with a small chuckle, as he felt round his pocket for his pouch of tobacco, "good time for putting down roots and for growin' something new."

Gilbert saw now what his father meant and he chuckled too. The amber scent of unburned tobacco leaf whispered past his nose, and he watched his father pack it down into his pipe with practised hands; calloused, rough and strong. Gilbert could not help but compare them to his own; fine boned and steady, with a stubborn stain of ink upon the knuckle of his index finger.

"Are you sorry that I won't be taking over the farm, Father?"

The older man set the little cup of leaves alight and sucked for a time before he answered.

"Are _you_?"

"No." Gilbert's voice was firm and unafraid.

"Then neither am I."

Then the door between the two was flung wide, releasing a golden beam of light upon them both. Gilbert turned, perceiving a figure in the doorway but was unable to make out who it was. John whisked his pipe away to the edge of the porch and gave it a sturdy tap. The charred contents fell into the garden border, adding to the pile of smoked -and unsmoked- tobacco that lay there like a guilty secret. If one had peered into the patch of helianthus growing directly below where Gilbert sat they would have found his own little boyhood legacy -made of cherry-stones, spruce chews and curly wood shavings.

"Oh, I might have known you'd be out here-"

"Mary Maria! We were just-"

"Oh please don't bother yourself, John, you just leave the women to it. Never mind my fingers are _worn_ to the blessed bone, and my _feet!_ -it seems that everyone's found themselves a nice little place to sit -with _never_ a thought for me."

Never mind too, that she had evicted her cousin from his armchair with the same complaint an hour ago; Mary Maria had been poorly used and felt bound to say so: So this was Avonlea's idea of a wedding was it? Expecting a body to come_ all_ the way over here and then _making_ them to cater for it! This would _never_ happen in Charlottetown.

"Please, take my place, Aunt!" Gilbert said, "I was just going for a moonlight stroll."

He winked at his father and strode off again, taking the gate in one brisk leap; seeking undiscovered paths and following them as he followed his own heart.

And as John Blythe lay in the arms of his wife that night he listened out for the click of the latch, to the sound of his son coming home again for the last time.

**THANK YOU FOR ALL YOUR KIND WORDS ABOUT THIS STORY SO FAR– my words seem to come faster when I know you are waiting for the next chapter!**


	5. Chapter 5

"_Anne wakened on the morning of her wedding day to find the sunshine winking in at the window of the little porch gable and a September breeze frolicking with her curtains._

"_I'm so glad the sun will shine on me," she thought happily._

_from chapter four, the First Bride at Green Gables; Anne's House of Dreams**  
**_

_**With love and gratitude, as ever, to L.M. Montgomery -everything is hers, only this idea is mine.  
**_

_**Chapter Five: ...and Under the Sun**_

**K+**

She flung back her bedclothes and took a long, satisfying stretch; feeling altogether too aware of her arms, her legs, and the body between that connected them all. Deliciously aware, her skin alive with feeling, every little hair felt charged; the very nails on her hands and feet seemed to shoot sparks out into the room.

The breeze blew about her body with teasing little wisps. She breathed it in deeply, arching her back to take in the fragrance of a fresh cut, grassy scent that was wild, almost virile. And then -_oh bliss_- the warm achey feel that blossomed from the heart of her; like a familiar finger drawing circles on her skin, increasing its size and pressure until she pulsed with pleasure. She pointed her feet and stretched out her arms, the soft underside of one kissing against her mouth. The scent of her body mixed with that on the air, and it danced around her like the answer to a question she had never dared ask until now:

_I do, she said, I do, I do, I do..._

Her little room seemed to echo the words within her, and then at once Anne realised that the sound she heard came from the other side of her door.

Tap tap tap...

She scooped her coverlet over herself and called out with more exuberance than she meant.

"Yes!"

The door slowly opened to the sight of Dora proudly carrying a breakfast tray of toothsome delights.

"Oh, darling! Breakfast in bed!" Anne drew herself up on her pillows and patted her lap. "Today I hope that every girl in the world becomes a bride if it means she gets to enjoy such a special a treat. I feel like a Queen."

Dora lay it before her like the precious offering it was, with a grave little face and lips pursed tight.

"It was Davy's idea, Anne. But Marilla said since I did most of the making I should be the one to bring it to you."

Anne beheld the crispy gold hotcakes, a tiny jar of raspberry preserves and the milk-white jug filled to the brim with pale yellow cream -and nary a drop of it spilt. In contrast to this dainty spread was an chaotic display of golden rod and magenta chrysanthemums crammed into a jam jar.

"Davy did the flowers," Dora said, as she watched Anne's face take in the contents of the tray. "He didn't want to come up, he's cross that Marilla wouldn't let him have the roses."

Roses had flowered early this year and the tiny folded buds so favoured in a bride's bouquet were not to be found. But they were yet in their prime, and in this Anne was fortunate; in another week they would have blown, from the girlish blooms they were now, to blousey matrons in comfortable clothes. Marilla jealously guarded each and every stem -of her own and her neighbours besides- so that Anne might have the wedding of her dreams. She might have scoffed at Anne's _idea _of a wedding in front of Rachel; but within her heart she understood just how much these Queens of Flowers mattered to the girl.

"I'm to ask if you want a coffee or a tea or glass of milk, now," Dora said, as Anne took the napkin from her with a grateful smile.

"Tea, please," Anne answered, just as Marilla appeared in the doorway with the rosebud tea set.

"Oh, Marilla! I should be down with you all, helping with the preparations," Anne cried, noting the wispy halo of hair that had already escaped from the older woman's twisted little knot; a sure sign she had already been up for hours.

Marilla poured the tea and handed her a cup.

"Well, I hoped you wouldn't take _too_ long about it," she said, "I'd been counting on Dora to make things easy for you but she's got her hands full with the Blake children ...their father is going over the reading for the service and their _mother_-" here she paused, with a look on her face that questioned whether such a description was even fitting, "disappeared into the wash house an _hour_ ago!"

"She told me to tell you she borrowed your kimono, Anne. The little boy spit up upon hers..."

"Yes, well never mind that, now," Marilla continued, smoothing down her hair as she though she would smooth down her prickly humour, "why don't you see if Mrs Blake has finished up, there's a good girl."

And like the good girl she was, Dora turned with a light, even step, leaving Anne and Marilla together.

"It's unaccountable to be sure, but I can't begin to think of anyone but you in this room, Anne," Marilla said, as she went to the window and straightened the curtains. The billowing muslin fell obediently into even pleats under her hand.

Anne looked about her with a sentimental affection, trying to picture Dora where she herself had once been; scribbling dreamily at her bureau, thrown into despair on her bed, preening vainly in her looking glass. It might be that Marilla's feelings were not so unaccountable after all. But then this room had been a cold, bare box when Anne had first taken possession of it; with little notion it would one day become so adorned with all the pretty things that lay both within and without its occupant. Who knew how Dora might transform it, or how the room itself might make some small change upon her?

"Won't you share this with me, dearest of Marilla's?" Anne said of the breakfast on her lap, "I'm quite unused to eating anything up here but broth and brown bread."

It was the standard fare for those confined to their room, either in illness or in banishment, so that the food before her now seemed a banquet. Though it might be closer to the truth to say that Anne felt she could not eat more than a morsel of anything, and hoped Marilla's appetite might spare Dora a disappointment.

Marilla looked upon the tray as if she had been offered hot coals. No more than a spoonful of porridge had passed her lips this morning -it was a scandalous waste, but Davy had said the good Lord might overlook the small transgression if it fattened his prize pig a little quicker. And more scandalous still, Marilla found herself agreeing with him!

The corners of her mouth curled with unexplained mirth. "What a fine pair we are, Anne, I do believe for all Davy's insufferable boasting we might be eating a baked ham this Christmas, after all!"

Anne hid an uncomprehending smile behind her tea cup.

"Well, what about a drop of this good strong brew? Just think of it as a Christian kindness, if not to me, then to Rachel. Imagine how much she will _relish_ the run of your kitchen while you hide up here with me."

But for all Marilla Cuthbert might have mellowed since this orphan first appeared, her imagination had not flourished with the same abandon. And neither Christian kindness nor it's blessing upon Rachel Lynde could make her stay.

"Enough of your nonsense, _Miss_ Shirley! If you are finished with this silly whim those blessed twins insisted on, then it's time you were up. Diana Wright will be here in two hours to style that head of yours, and she insisted you must be dressed first. Because, I imagine, you won't be able to _fit_ through the neck of your gown otherwise. The fashions today! -first sleeves and now these _pompadours _that looked as though a goose might lay an egg in it!" She smoothed her own hair again, comfortable in the knowledge neither beast nor bird would mistake her for a soft landing place.

The tray was whisked away and Anne found herself alone again, and it was not an unwelcome sensation -she had never feared solitude; and now that she was about to share a bedroom -_and that big ol' bed_- such moments would be as rare treasures to her. And with the wash house occupied and the breakfast complete, there was surely no harm to be done if she lay back again one last little time. She kicked back her coverlet again...

…

"Now kiss me, darling,"

Anne stood up and took Diana's hands in hers and placed a loving kiss upon her satiny cheek. "Oh, it won't do..." she cried, and she enveloped her best friend in her arms, heedless of the warnings Diana had sternly given, not to mess her dress or her hair.

"I don't care – I don't, I have to hold you, Diana!" she declared tearfully in her ear, "if I wrinkle it will serve as a lovely reminder of you."

"A fine reminder!" Diana replied, through tears of her own, "If you are to think of me today, let it be because I helped you become the most beautiful bride Green Gables has ever seen, and is ever likely to see."

"Well, I will certainly be the first, no one can take that away from me, wrinkled or not."

They released each other now and shared a small giggle.

"And the most beautiful, Anne, I mean it."

Diana steered the little bride to the full length mirror that was usually housed in the sewing room. And there reflected back in the Baltic pine frame was Anne, in a breathtaking ivory silk gown, trimmed at the throat and cuff with lace and seed pearls; it's simplicity relieved by a garden of pale embroidery from the deft hand of Rachel Lynde, and cinched with a wide satin band. Diana's face, creamy skinned and pink cheeked, peered over the bride's shoulder and she placed her hands round Anne's waist.

"Oh, Anne, your waist is so tiny. Why I could circle it myself." The full skirt below and softly drooping hair above seemed to make it look tinier still. "You look like a dream."

"But one I still happily recognise, Di. Thank you for everything you've done."

"Thank me? Why, I should have never forgiven you if you _hadn't_ let me-"

"No, darling. I don't just mean for today, I mean for always. I never knew what it was to be loved until _you_ loved me, Diana. I could never have endured the loss of Matthew... never wanted Gilbert's love... Without you, I-"

"Of course I should have been there for you! Who was there for me when Minnie-May-" Diana's voice caught too, in memory of that terrifying night when Anne came to her call- even after her mother had been so cruel, she had worked through the night and saved the little girl's life. Diana belonged to the favoured few who had always known love, but she had never known a love like Anne's. That deep and mysterious heart; even now she could not have guessed why Anne's love for Gilbert was connected with her.

"But as to you finally accepting poor ol' Gil, well you know, I was as surprised as anyone."

Anne gave her sheepish look.

"But I never would have let myself love _poor_ _ol' Gil, _Diana, if I hadn't seen how happy Fred made you. I am ashamed to admit it, but let me make a clean breast of it now, it seems only fitting on a day like this. I was ...disappointed" -she had been more than that, but there was no strict need to say so- "when you accepted Fred. I thought perhaps if you'd lived a life beyond the Orchard Slope you might have not have settled for some boy from Avonlea."

"Why, I knew that all along, you goose!"

"I _was_ a goose, a blind goose, and worse than that; an unimaginative goose-"

Long necked, honking, water fowl crowded about Diana's head, but she would try, as she always did, to follow Anne's thoughts to the end.

"for not seeing what you _always_ knew; that the love I dreamed of, the love that I _needed_" -here she stared hard at Diana to let her know she included her oldest, dearest friend in this need- "was right _here_ all along."

Anne pressed her cheek into the soft cloud of Diana's jet black hair. The tears fell again, but this time Diana contained her embrace to Anne's shoulder, nestling into her neck with a shivery sigh. Was it wrong to wish for just the tiniest moment that Anne might have accepted Billy Andrews after all! Then they might have shared this closeness forever. She banished the thought, as she banished the sadness; now was the time for joy. And no one deserved it more than Anne and Gilbert.

"No more tears," was her decree, though her own black eyes were like shiny pools, glistening with damp spiky lashes. "You'll get a red nose next, and that I think is a reminder you'll _not_ thank me for."

Anne wiped her eyes hastily and smiled at their reflection in the mirror, with a tiny sniff. Then Diana turned her briskly and assessed her tear-stained face.

How was it that the most unpromising things always made her best friend even lovelier? Those horrid tight sleeved dresses, her bobbed hair, those seven pesky freckles -had only served to highlight Anne's particular beauty. Even now those tears just made those great, grey eyes seem greater and greyer; her lip and cheek deepened like rain upon a paper rose. Diana remembered her own wedding day and the relief it was to be safely tucked behind her veil; it filtered out the red faces of both herself and Fred, so that -to each other at least- they only looked a nice becoming pink!

"Have you got your handkerchief, Anne, dear? If you're blubbing now just imagine when you say your vows."

"Oh, Diana, stop! I shall fall in a shameful heap if you go on," Anne sniffed again, then brought out the neatly folded square she had tucked into the ribbon at her waist.

"Anne Shirley! What pray tell, is that old rag?" Diana demanded, horrified.

"My something old," Anne answered as though it were obvious. "My dress, of course is my something new, and I've got your little engagement present on right now, for my something blue."

Diana gave a saucy grin at the thought of the gift Anne was wearing; a garter belt from Eaton's with sateen straps in baby blue.

"And your something borrowed?" Diana asked.

"Well..." the newly confident look vanished as quickly upon Anne's face, "Marilla once mentioned... though not for a while... that..."

"Goodness me, Anne, do you mean you say Marilla might have forgotten?"

"She's had a lot on her mind because of me, already-"

Diana privately thought that having a lot on her mind rather suited the dear old maid, Marilla hadn't looked so lively and smiling for a long time.

"-didn't like to bother her about it," Anne finished, quietly.

"This will _not_ do, I'll call her now-"

"But she's making the fruit salad now."

"Well she'll have to serve the Barry version today, because you need to talk to her. It's a piece of luck really," Diana added, "Marilla always puts too much apple in hers."

She flounced out of the room, leaving Anne to her reflections.

**...**

Anne was standing in front of the looking glass quietly murmuring 'I do', when Marilla entered.

"You _do_ what, child?" Marilla asked gruffly.

Anne turned swiftly round and coloured a little. She remembered the day when Marilla forbade her to talk to her friends in the mirror; it was that day of days when she was told she could stay at Green Gables. And now, _now_, she was leaving it.

"Drive you to distraction, most probably," Anne said gently.

"It's Gilbert Blythe who'll likely be distracted," said Marilla.

Knowing how much she admired and approved of her choice of husband, Anne understood Marilla's words to mean that she liked what she saw before her.

"Oh, Gilbert wouldn't mind if I wore the brown paper that this silk was wrapped in," Anne laughed lightly, "but _you_ Marilla, have you beheld yourself, this morn? I've had the sole use of this mirror for far too long."

She held out her hand and tucked Marilla's arm in hers, then looked at her reflection admiringly. The golden russet shots in the taffeta of her two piece was like a love-song to the redheaded girl beside her. But something was missing, Anne's gaze turned from rapture to a frown.

"Well, what is it, child?" said the eagle-eyed woman, "for pity's sake, tell me now. It's these sleeves isn't it? I shouldn't have minded Rachel's interfering when I ordered the material. I look like a pinhead in these leg o' mutton puffs!"

Anne quietly thought her hair could have been softened somewhat, but then she would not be Marilla if she altered her appearance altogether. And yet there was something... a brightness, a spark of her flinty spirit, which was simply and worryingly not there.

"Marilla, where is your amethyst brooch?"

Marilla turned to Anne now, and the bride perceived that sharpness of eye mist over.

"Well now, you didn't think I'd forgotten, Anne?" she reached inside her jacket and took the sacred treasure from a tiny pocket in the lining. Then with trembling hands placed it carefully at the young woman's throat. Anne could feel the warm glow of the purply gem, it seemed to work upon her like a magic elixir; she felt a calmness and a peace; she felt Marilla's own heart.

"Something old," Marilla said softly.

"Oh, I have my something old, Marilla."

Anne fished out the little square at her waist and only Marilla could know what a precious thing it was.

_Matthew's handkerchief_.

Marilla blinked hard against the sudden torrent of feeling within her.

"It's true Matthew wanted you to have something of himself should you have ever married, Anne, but, as _always, _he had something a little more stylish in mind."

Her hands went to Anne's cheek and she patted it softly, as Matthew often had, and then touched at the jewel at her neck.

"It's yours now."

It had belonged to Matthew and Marilla's mother and they had wanted to pass it on to Anne. There was nothing else that needed to be said.

"So," said Marilla, her brusque tone driving away the tears that threatened to fall again -Anne could have kissed her for it- "we'll have to find something else for you to borrow."

Anne knew just the thing.

"Then let me have use of your handkerchief, Marilla. And you," she placed the old one into Marilla's hand, "shall have mine."

"Blessed child!" Marilla cried: For Anne to understand what it meant for Marilla to have something of her brother with her as she watched their girl leave Green Gables forever. "Oh, but I will _miss_ you, Anne..." and for the briefest of moments she allowed herself to embrace the bride with a tender and sentimental heart. "But then," she sniffed, as she pulled away with the tiniest hint of regret, "I seem to have been saying goodbye to you for years."

"To say goodbye you would have had to say hello to me first, don't forget!" Anne reminded her, gaily, "I'll always come back to you, and a part of me will always be here at Green Gables."

But it wasn't the same, they knew that it wasn't, and they knew it never could be:

_Like a different hand making the same recipe; it would always lack that particular touch_, Marilla thought to herself.

"Fiddlesticks!" she suddenly exclaimed, "I've left Diana to make the fruit salad!" she placed a quick dry peck upon the bride before departing in a taffeta-ed whirl, "I hope it's not done yet," Anne heard her say, as she trotted down the stairs "she always puts too many peaches in hers."

**THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU FOR YOUR REVIEWS - I AM OVERWHELMED BY THE LOVELINESS. **

**PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO SHARE YOUR IDEAS WITH ME TOO!**

verostar: yes 'electric anne' had to edited a bit to maintain the k+ rating of the rest of the chapter!

godons: i love love love that you always review my work; and i had to get that mary maria in there somehow (shudder)

amybf: good to know our minds are in synch about anne and gil

alinya: hooray for marilla, hope you like it! i put another reference to embroidery in it just for you!

hma: it was strange to write john- because all we really know about him is how great his son is, so i'm glad you liked it

insubfreak: thanks for noting that detail about gil, he is a human being afterall! and good point about the doomed romance. the 'island boy' quote is killer isn't it?

rachelmargaret: thanks for your thoughtful comments -hope you liked the updates too.

guest: yes i can' wait for gil to become a 'ma-an' too -but i'll make him suffer for a few more chapters first...

synchchick: why thank you

angelrose: hope you like next chapter just as much!

drizzyj: i didn't know i was going go flashback like that -was worried about all that backstory being a dull read- so i'm glad it worked

guest: thank you my dear, the romance, that's the easy dreamy part; getting the silence and the sentiment between gil and his dad right was hard -but worth it- so i'm glad you liked it

raindropcatcher: well you've made me teary enough. i didn't realise it was going to get all melancholy -but all the better to enjoy the hotness later!


	6. Chapter 6

**Well my dears you made it half way through ...of course you know the newlyweds still have to to sit through an evening with Dr Dave and Captain Jem, (!) but here's a little taste of what's to come -all aboard the Love Train!**

"_Laughter and joy had their way; and when Anne and Gilbert left to catch the Carmody train, with Paul as driver, the twins were ready with rice and shoes..."_

_from chapter four, the First Bride at Green Gables; Anne's House of Dreams_

**Chapter six: Untie the Knot**

**T**

A cloud of red dust erupted from under the train as it lurched itself forward, with a slow, shuddering hiss.

"Anne!" Gilbert called sharply, pulling at her elbow, "We must leave now!"

He had been assisting the senior porter with the larger of their trunks, leaving his bride to her farewells with her beloved pupil, but he overestimated the good sense of either of them. They might have thrilled to the sound of that lone bird that sung tributes to love at their wedding, but they were deaf to the conductor's whistle.

Paul Irving brushed his lips to the tips of Anne's hand as she was guided -more or less- to the steps of the train by her husband. Her hand was still outstretched and waving as the train gathered speed and carried the newlyweds away; the Island's colours blurring past them, the thrum of the train like Gilbert's racing heart.

"Anne, I believe if I hadn't looked for you, you'd still be on the platform swapping sonnets with that boy!" Gilbert said, with some admonishment.

Anne straightened her hat, tucking a loose curl under the wide gauzy brim and turned to him, the very picture of innocence, with a pert glint in her eyes.

"There's another train on Monday, Gil. You wouldn't have had to wait too long for me."

"I wouldn't have to wait..." the doctorly face was gone as Gilbert's eyes darkened suddenly, "I have _waited_ half my life for you, Anne," he said gruffly; and whether by the train's movements, or his own, she found herself pressed tightly against him in the next moment. "I'm not waiting any longer."

"Excuse me, sir, you cannot house your receptacles there," a young porter said in hushed tones, appearing from the door to first class and shutting it with an air of solemnity. A small humph then escaped from him, at the sight of the work to be done -though who was the more inconvenienced at this moment, it would not be fair to say.

Anne turned to face the lad with a hurried, blushing smile, "Of course! So sorry! You see, I only just made it to the train."

She looked about her at the higgledy display their luggage and the hamper (heaving with treats Mrs Barry had made for their three hour journey) was making on the floor of the carriageway. The fabulous brim of her outsized hat brushing her shoulder, left and right, before coming to its own awkward stop, as it snagged upon the amethyst brooch pinned to the collar of her travelling suit.

"Miss, allow me!" the porter declared, and made a diligent leap over the larger case to assist the pretty-figured girl, whose prettier face now tilted at him in a rather becoming fashion. But how to help without placing his hands upon her person? The poor boy could not decide.

Gilbert, saying nothing, reached his hands above Anne's head and drew the hat pin from the pale straw crown of her hat with a sure steady movement, handing it to her with a barely contained smirk.

"There you are, _Miss_," he said, and then bent a little closer, "now, be careful not to prick yourself."

Anne pursed her lips with a wide eyed expression that implored Gilbert not to say another word. She gingerly lowered her hat and held it tightly to her breast.

"You should go to your seat now, Miss," the porter said. "The speed; she'll pick up, and there's a patch of rough track 'fore we make the straight pass to the Glen -so you want to watch out!" he warned her. "Unless of course, you'd like me to show you to your-"

"N-no. No thank you. I'm sure to find my way," she managed to say through gritted teeth, as Gilbert shot her knowing looks from behind the porter's back. "This man looks like he needs your help more than I do!" she added, and she caught up her skirts preparing to swish round the obstacles on the floor.

"Well, if you're sure, Miss," the sight of those ankles and the sight of those bags -it would be as no surprise to guess where the porter wished his attention might be needed.

But the lady had a look that said she was quite sure. There was only one first class carriage, and the names of their ticket-holders were printed in a fine hand on the outside of each door -certainly not beyond the abilities of fully fledged B.A.

Anne left the men to the luggage and entered the narrow walkway of her carriage, tracing a gloved hand upon the wall of doors to her right, while the other clutched her hat; it almost obscured her view as she read the respective labels. But the task was not so easy as she supposed, and she looked in vain for their compartment.

It wasn't here. And if it wasn't here it wasn't anywhere -there was only one first class carriage. Unless Gilbert had been teasing about his purchase of the extravagant ticket! But no, it was impossible; he had been looking forward to being alone with his bride just as much as she had dreamed of the little pocket of solitude they would share, before they were to be met by Gilbert's people at Four Winds. The thought of being squeezed upon a bench in the third class carriage with weary, or _worse_, chatty travellers snagged at her heart, like the brooch upon her impractical hat.

She was working it from the fine woven straw when Gilbert approached, unseen behind the brim.

"Is there something about trains that unsettles you, Anne?" he asked, as he dropped two portmanteaus and the hamper with a sore-handed thud.

"Oh, Gil! N-no," she stammered, as she finally worked the jewel free. "It's only that there's been some bothersome mistake," and she gestured to the cards that lined the aisle.

Gilbert duly glanced over them in a non-plussed manner. "What is it, Anne, do you not like the compartment?"

"Our _names_, Gilbert," Anne answered, with a disappointed tone that was not quite concealed, "They're not there."

Gilbert looked again, and there not two feet from Anne was a blue edged card tucked neatly into its brass cornices, clearly bearing the curly scripted names of the Doctor and his wife.

"Well then, is it that there's something about marriage that unsettles you, _Miss_?" he asked her, laughingly.

Anne stopped fussing with her attire and looked up at him, "I don't know what you find so funny," she said, a little furrow appearing on her un-hatted brow "I thought you would be as annoyed as I am."

Gilbert moved closer, with a whisper of that laugh still in his voice.

"As _you_ are?" he asked.

"Ah, yes?" Anne answered, still perplexed.

The train rattled round a bend and threw her to the window, and Gilbert quickly grabbed Anne's waist. She felt the familiar touch of his fingers pressing through the velvet of her jacket.

"And who _are_ you?" he asked.

"Gilbert, I-" Anne looked over his shoulder and perceived a shadow passing by the frosted glass of the entrance to first class. He brought her attention back to him as he played with the nap of the fabric, brushing it up and down over her flaring hip.

"Who _are_ you?" he asked again.

"I'm Anne, Gil." But her answer didn't satisfy him, she saw he had a look that was both teasing and intrigued. "Anne, with an e," she added hopefully. A tiny spark flickered in his hazel eyes, but it was neither the answer he sought.

"_Who_ are you?"

"Anne Shirley, then," she said, almost defiantly now. Her lips seemed to buzz as she answered, he was so close to her now she felt her breath hit his face. She wanted to understand just what this man was driving at, but more than that she wanted to be kissed.

"Anne _Shirley_, is it?" and he stared at her hard. She knew that look well -he wore the same expression whenever he bested her at some silly game; Anne wondered idly if he would ask her to spell it out for the class!

"Y-yes."

If he asked her again Anne decided her next answer would be 'chrysanthemum.'

"I don't think so," Gilbert said, slowly and deliberately. The carriage pulsed as they passed over a small bridge, and they juddered rhythmically for a moment.

"You don't?" Anne murmured, she was staring at his mouth again.

"No. I don't. If you were Anne Shirley would I be able to do this?"

He kissed her now, and it was not a delicate little brush to her cheek but hot and sensuous, lingering on the sweet little bow at the top of her mouth and then drawing in her fuller bottom lip with his, so that her skin was left damp and cool when he withdrew.

Anne had to press her flushed lips together to contain herself before she could speak again. She breathed deeply, noticing how her chest pressed into his.

"I'm fairly certain you've done that to me before."

"And what about this?" and that sweetly distracting hand at her hip smoothed over her ribs and cupped her breast. Gilbert's thumb traced lightly over the dart of her jacket and he had to swallow a sigh of his own as he felt Anne lean into his touch, unconsciously. His hand vibrated with the rhythm of the train; it was a while before Anne remembered that she hadn't him answered yet.

"W-well, perhaps now we should be looking for somewhere a little more secret, so you could keep doing that."

"Somewhere like there?" he asked, gesturing to the door behind her.

Anne stilled the hand at her breast, but did not remove it.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you, that compartment belongs to-" she turned and looked behind her shoulder, "Doctor and-" she turned back to him, and dropped her hat, "_Mrs Blythe_."

A heavenly smile broke out upon Gilbert's face.

"And _who_ are you?" he asked again.

"Mrs Blythe." The answer was like honey in her mouth.

"Say it again," Gilbert said gently, drawing his wandering hand to her neck, to feel the words as they came from her mouth.

"Mrs Blythe."

It was the strangest thing to say it; like the truth and a secret all at once. And to hear it, she felt there could never be a sweeter term of endearment.

He said it now, as soft as a prayer, "Mrs Blythe?"

"Yes, Doctor Blythe."

"That secret place you were talking about?"

A door from a compartment next to the carriage's entrance then folded open, and a sternly suited gentleman exited without any sign he had seen the two lovers, until he closed the door behind him with a remonstrating slam. They smothered their giggles without much hope or care, then Anne reached back and opened their own door.

"Let me show you," she said, and grabbed her case, and Gilbert the rest of their luggage.

They stepped inside their little room and shut the door fast, on the world -and the hat, that still lay forgotten on the floor.

The luggage was thrown upon one of the scarlet leather banquettes, a dangerous sounding chink was heard from the bottle of elderflower cordial in the hamper.

"Should we check that, do you think?" Anne asked, her hands in Gilbert's curls, "we might end up with soggy sandwiches..."

"I'm only hungry for one thing, Anne-girl," Gilbert replied with a dry little smile, and he brought his face to hers like the starving man he was.

Anne pulled roughly at the fingers of her kid skin gloves, flinging them about distractedly, as their kissing became stronger and more fervent. Gilbert running his hands over her velvety jacket again, the feel of it under his fingers like her own creamy skin.

"Take it off, Gil," Anne managed to say when their mouths finally parted, and if he paused for tiniest moment -willing his blood to return to his fingers so that he could undo those fussy beads- she never noticed.

The little compartment was then filled with that secret sound of buttons -and hearts- bursting open. And as Anne was finally freed she marvelled that her heaving chest could have ever been enclosed in the confining little coat. It was not thrown on the bench with the same heedlessness as their bags, however, for it bore a purple treasure of a love and a time greater than their frolic on this train. Anne folded it, if not neatly, than as near she could manage, and popped it on the rack beside their door.

Now Gilbert raced his hands greedily over the translucent muslin of her blouse, which fell loosely about her arms and was knotted with lace at her throat. Remembering then the sight of Anne on his bed that night last spring in her gauzy little chemise, a sound that was neither a word nor a moan filled him; and he encircled her in his arms, feeling the stays that bound her ribs and bosom.

"I love you," he said, though right at this moment what he truly meant was-

_I cannot wait to love you..._

Every part of his body told her, even if he did not; though he could no longer stop the urgent tumble of words that had forever pressed inside him. Anne's heart cried out as she heard him now, between the kisses they rained on each other; murmuring all the things he had kept unsaid while she was not yet his wife.

"Oh, darling girl, oh sweet, sweet love, oh please! Oh Anne! Oh Anne!"

She could not get close enough to him, she felt she wanted his words to clothe her instead of the ones she wore.

"Love me here," she pleaded, and she yanked up the cuff of her blouse exposing the delicate skin of her wrist. She felt his mouth trace a trail upon the fine blue veins and then snake to the crease of her elbow. Gilbert kissed her there with an equal passion to the one her own lips had enjoyed, and Anne marvelled at the wondrous creation the body was; (if Jane only knew!) that such sensations that could be evoked upon even the most innocent thing.

She had thought she would direct Gilbert's adoring mouth to all manner of places on her person, but then feeling her own appetite for him grow, she pulled her arm away and ran her fingers all over his body. Sliding them under the lapels of his grey morning-suit, it soon after fell to the floor; and Anne took in the feel of his chest, and the warmth and the smell of him just beneath the crisp white cotton of his shirt. With unthinking hands she began to unbutton it, starting at the ones directly before her; one... two... and then hesitating, unsure which way to proceed. To go down was to go on a journey not to be taken on this train; and to go up... the way was secured with the silken knot of his tie.

Gilbert closed his eyes as he felt her hands at his neck. She could not know how often he'd imagined Anne doing exactly what she was doing right now. As he had wearily undressed, after days in the lecture-hall and nights in the hospital, he would think of her lithe white fingers working at his tie, the feel when the tautly bound fabric finally unloosened and came undone, made him quiver inwardly every time; and his longing for Anne was inexpressible.

"Can you... can you undo it, Anne?"

When he opened his eyes again she was gazing up at him, with the tiniest look of concern in her large grey eyes.

"I can't quite get my fingertips in the right place."

The two shuffled comically to the banquette that was not covered in luggage, and as they sat down, the satisfying click of the train on the tracks resonated through them both. Anne went back to work at the knot with an adorable look of concentration on her face.

"It's all back-to-front," she said distractedly, and Gilbert wondered if she meant the fact that she was undressing him, or whether she thought he should be doing it himself; he asked her as much, and she laughed.

"No, I mean that when I do my _own_ it's in the mirror, you ninny!" and she placed a tender little kiss upon his nose.

The knot came free in her hand in the next moment and Gilbert felt an exquisite shiver fuse through him, as it slid from around his neck with a slick little snap.

"Why do you suppose," the unsuspecting temptress asked, as she played with the silken length, winding it around her hands, "they call it 'tying the knot'; when one gets married, I mean?"

He forced himself to think on it, fortunately it was an easy question.

"I would have thought the answer obvious, wouldn't you?" and he crossed his legs uncomfortably, unable to tear his gaze away from his tie being woven tighter and tighter around Anne's hands. "Like the way you're joining your hands now, it's like binding two people together."

He grabbed the end now and it unravelled it from her to him.

"Well, I think it should be called _untying_ the knot," Anne said, drawing one knee upon the leather seat, her eyes staring out shyly to the window of the train; watching it bear them away from the life they had known -and the things that had kept them apart. "Because finally -_finally_- two people aren't bound by propriety anymore ...there's nothing to stop them, nothing to keep them from each other. You don't _tie_ a knot when you marry the one you love, Gil," she looked at him now, and that heavenly smile had returned to his face again -how divine it was to know she would now be seeing it everyday. "You _untie_ it, you see. Because ...you are finally free."

Gilbert looked at her, one eyebrow slightly raised above his hazel eyes, not quite convinced -for it was a very proper part of their very proper Island where they would begin their married life; not some heathen idyll.

"Well, consider this, then, Gilbert. The letters in untie are also in unite!"

Such impossible logic seemed only fitting for his impossible girl.

"I love you, Anne."

And it was what he truly meant.

Leaning forward Anne placed her lips upon his, "I know it," she whispered against his mouth. "Now let me love you..."

Anne unbuttoned his collar now, and she saw that familiar brown skin at his throat, and then slowly unbuttoned the next and saw the beginnings of the collarbone that spanned those broad shoulders, and the gentle cleft of the muscles on his chest- it was a paler, more tender skin than she imagined- rising up and down, with the rhythm of the train. The third and fourth button were already opened and if Anne moved her hand to the last ones his shirt would be the next thing on the floor.

"No fair," Gilbert said, his eyes drawn to the lacy bow of her blouse, that nestled sweetly beneath her chin. He took her hand from the last button and placed them both in his. "When is it my turn to untie you?" he asked softly, uncrossing his legs and widening them.

Anne's smile belied the rush of feeling flooding inside her, the garments she was bound in now too tight and hot against her skin. She brought their hands to her lips and kissed at their fingertips; and somehow, magically, they all felt as one...

Anne let go then, and Gilbert's hand was against the knot at her throat, and she felt the pull, and this lovely release, as it came undone at his touch.

And for a perfect moment nothing else existed inside their little world. But outside it... a fastidious young porter prepared to knock at their door, trying to find the pretty young Miss, who had lost her magnificent hat.

**...**

**Phew... need a little lie down and a cup of tea after that...**

**But thank you _all_ for reading my story, and for all your _dazzling_ comments!**


	7. Chapter 7

**Meanwhile back at the farm... something to read while you have that cup of tea ;o)  
**

"_...Diana and her small fry, the Echo Lodge people and the Allans, had stayed to help the two old ladies over the loneliness of the first evening; and they contrived to have a quietly pleasant little supper-time, sitting long around the table and chatting over all the details of the day. While they were sitting there Anne and Gilbert were alighting from the train at Glen St Mary."_

_from chapter four, the First Bride at Green Gables; Anne's House of Dreams_

**Chapter Seven: At the Gate of Green Gables**

**K**

"You're lookin' rather pale, Marilla," said Rachel, as she cut into another slice of Sarah Blythe's cherry tart, "this jug of cream's got more colour than you," and more so when the cherries bleed into it like that, she thought; pouring it over the pie until it lapped up the sides of her bowl, the gilded lip like a plimsole line.

Marilla wished she might respond to her friend by saying _she_ was looking rather fat! But one could not live peaceably for seven years and have equal rights when it came to speaking your mind; _someone_ had to be circumspect, and more often than she liked, the duty fell to Marilla.

She eyed the woman opposite heave a hefty forkful to her mouth, and decided if she were to speak, then now would be the time.

"Well now, Rachel, I feel just fine."

Rachel's mouth was no sooner empty of cherry tart than it was full of words again.

"I'm afraid to say you don't look it, my dear. Pale and interesting might suit our Anne, but it does not suit you!" she announced, as if there could be nothing more to add upon the subject.

And Marilla decided she wouldn't. She did feel tired and cross, and somehow despite the feasting and the company, all washed out; as if the colour had indeed gone out of her life -and moved to Glen St Mary.

"Think I'll walk a spell," she said quietly, and Mrs Allen in the chair next to her, stood up and took the shawl that was draped on her chair, and tucked it gently about its owner with an understanding smile. The only noise from Rachel being the sound of her fork scraping against her empty bowl. "All that eating and sitting -it's bad for the constitution," Marilla couldn't help but add, as she departed through the kitchen door and went to the porch.

"Poor Marilla!" Rachel said. "It was the same for me when my babies left; I never took the same pleasure in life again."

And the last of the cherry pie made itself comfortable on Mrs Lynde's cream glazed dish.

**...**

Marilla went to the high-backed wooden chair and sat down unthinkingly. It had been part of a pair that Angus Cuthbert had made as a wedding gift to his wife; but it's match was no longer sitting next to it, having been replaced with the more comfortable pleasures of Rachel Lynde's rocker. She stared unseeing at the kitchen garden, heaving with its harvest; and then her doleful eyes fell upon the swinging bench where Anne had liked to sit.

Marilla Cuthbert, however, was no thinker of maudlin thoughts; or at least she was not ready to think them yet. And there would be plenty to divert her once the guests had gone; the scrubbing and the sweeping waiting for her like faithful friends. But until then there was nothing for it but to do what she told Rachel Lynde she would do; and she set out for a good long stroll.

The flowers that fringed the drive-way seemed to wave at her, and again Marilla's thoughts returned to Anne, and the sight of her waving goodbye from the buggy that carried her and Gilbert away to their House of Dreams.

A House of Dreams! Marilla had dreamed of one herself, though she had been much younger than Anne, and three times as practical. It was to be something a little more sociably situated than the house her father had built; not that she wished to live directly by the road: if the news of Avonlea didn't make it to her ears through the normal course of conversation then it was not for her to hear it. But still a house should be close enough that the burdens of wifehood might be made a little easier. She knew her own mother had been denied the pleasures of many an afternoon's quilting or choir; the walk there and back often hampered because of bad roads or their horse being otherwise occupied. Angus Cuthbert liked his women close to him; he was not an especially jealous fellow; but, like any common man, he liked what he liked and was accustomed to the getting of it.

Marilla walked on towards the gate of Green Gables, her hands grazing pleasantly against the feathery spears of golden rod that tickled at her tired, worn hands.

_Like little fires!_ Anne had said, her braids swinging, her hand tugging at Marilla's, as they made their way to Church. She was unable to decide whether Anne's need to be always running every Sunday was plain ungodly or showed a devout heart.

"Little fires?" Marilla had asked her; though she knew she shouldn't encourage the girl with her peculiar talk, something about Anne inclined her to make exceptions to the rule, "And what, dare I ask, are they?"

The very name sounded an unpromising subject for a walk to God's House, but one could never be certain where the child's fancies would lead.

"Why, didn't you ever have a little fire, Marilla? When you had a such _passion_ for something, so it seemed to burn your _very_ soul?"

Marilla's tongue was about to demand that Anne hold hers, but the girl was too quick.

"Oh, I had this passion once, for a red velvet tam with a golden tassel -just like these golden rod, only upside down of course- I used to pass it by on the way to the green -that was when I lived at the Morley asylum and we didn't have a _patch_ to play on, so once a week -or _nearly_ once a week- we got marched down to the green. And we had to go by this _heavenly_ hat shop and there it was; that red and gold tam. Of course, I know better _now_ than to have such a passion for a thing like that-"

Marilla smiled complacently, thinking credit for this would be due to her sensible influence.

"-because I can _never_ wear red and gold! Red? With _my_ hair? But I was only eight then and I didn't know any better; the thought of that hat just _burned_ in me like a little fire!"

"Sounds like stuff and nonsense. A hat is a hat is a hat."

"Well might you say that when_ every_ hat you have is so lovely; I suppose having your choice of hats you couldn't _imagine_ how it feels to have a passion for one. But you must have had a passion for something, Marilla?"

"John Blythe!" Marilla said at once, and she whipped her hands away from the firey plumes, and brushed them on her skirts, "What on earth brings you back here so soon?"

"Evening, Marilla," John said, he touched at the peak of his cap, which sat on his silvery hair, soft and familiar -a far cry from the stiff beige thing he had worn to the wedding that afternoon. "You find me on my way to you, as it happens," and he held up a large white platter that the gate between them had obscured from her view. "Yours, I believe."

"Not ours, either, I'm afraid, but it's owner is still at our table and I am happy to take it to her."

"Still entertaining, all these hours later? Another first for Green Gables, I'd say," he said, with a cheeky grin.

"Oh, there's been a lot of changes since you last came for company, John Blythe!" Marilla answered, with a spirited smile of her own.

Though there was not much to smile about when they thought of their last afternoon together, all those years ago. There had been a minister's wife there too, the minister of course, and an exciting addition to the Avonlea circle; the minister's son, just returned from his mission work in Sumatra.

John Blythe had come to call at the kitchen door, looking for the girl who had not turned up for the first day's picking of the Strawberry apples, that grew exclusively on the Blythe property. He had teased her for days with tales of their growing ripeness, determined Marilla Cuthbert would wait until they were perfect in colour and flavour, and that he should be the one to see her take that first delicious bite!

"John Blythe, what on earth... was Papa expecting you?" asked Marilla, pressing her damp hands against her hair in a small effort to tidy her appearance.

"No, _I_ was expecting _you_, Rilla," he replied, producing a scrumptious blushing specimen from the bushel of apples he was carrying.

"Oh, John, I'm so sorry. Father only told me during luncheon that we were we were expecting company."

John hid a little scowl, little liking the habit Mr Cuthbert had of withholding news from his family until it suited him to tell it; the plans of his son and daughter were as clouds in the sky to him, and he the North Wind.

"But these apples are a lucky boon for me, I'm short for the tart I'm making, and Papa got awful cantankerous when he thought we shouldn't have enough to offer our guests." Even though Marilla had taken sole care of the housework for these last six months she had much to learn in her father's eyes.

John handed the bushel over, though not without a tiny flinch at the thought of those rare apples being stewed for a pie. They were not meant for the guests at the Green Gables table, they were meant for his girl.

"Marilla! Bless me, child, where are you?" Angus Cuthbert called, striding into the kitchen with every expectation of her being exactly where he thought she should be.

"I'm here, Papa," she answered directly. "Look, John Blythe has come with the first of the Strawberry A-"

"Marilla, Reverend MacAllister's wife would like the recipe for your lavender shortbread," said Angus, nodding cordially at the youth at his door, "Much obliged, young Blythe, give my regards to your parents, there's a good lad."

It might have ended there, John might have walked back with only annoyance and bluster in his heart, if the Reverend's wife had not entered the kitchen just then.

"Angus, I told you not to pester the poor child for the recipe now," she said, and walked to the little group at the kitchen door. "As if she hasn't enough to do at the kitchen table, now you'd have her writing at it too!" She gave the tiniest wink to Marilla in a sign of feminine solidarity.

Marilla turned to her and smiled. Violet MacAllister had been like a second mother since her own had died; with a wonderful knack of swooping in and saving her just at the right time -and a terrible one, of flying away again to let someone else clean up the mess.

"John brought us Strawberry apples," she said, with -the older woman noted- the tiniest hint of pride in the Blythe boy's good deed.

"You've been taken my catechism to heart, I see," she said to John, with a wry smile, "loving your neighbour as you love yourself. Why don't you join us for afternoon tea? There's a surprise in the parlour which I think you'll be just as glad to see as anyone. If that's alright?" she asked Marilla.

"Yes, you may join us, _if_ your father can spare you, of course," Angus said on Marilla's behalf, "You'll have to make _two_ tarts now, Marilla," he continued, by way of further discouragement.

"Tarts! From Strawberry apples! For shame, Angus Cuthbert. We'll cut them up and serve them with cheese and pickle," the minister's wife declared, "a humble meal will suit the company."

She did not stay and help the girl, however, but took Angus Cuthbert's arm so that he could escort her back to the parlour. For Violet MacAllister could only swoop and flit away again.

Marilla worked on with a distracted eye as John washed up at the pump by the kitchen steps; and when he came to her his hair and eyelashes seemed blacker and thicker than they already were. They had both left school some years ago, though they might have stayed longer had circumstances allowed. But with Marilla's mother and John's father enduring long illnesses, their duty had been to their home. For Marilla the choice had not been difficult, she would rather have spent the last years with her mother than recite obscure passages in a small, stuffy classroom. John, however, had not bent to the will of Providence so meekly; though only Marilla knew it.

He was nineteen now, and had his life been in his own keeping, would be bound for places far from the shores of little Avonlea. But his life was not, and Marilla could not say with an honest heart that she was very sad about it.

"Help you slice 'em up, Rill' ?" John asked, grabbing the knife from her hand.

"Help _yourself_, I think you mean," she said, then looked for the smaller paring knife that lay within a drawer. She hardly ever used it, preferring the larger one, and this knife's dullness and size made for slow and awkward work. Her thumb was cut, and within John's hand just as quickly. And before she knew it he had placed it in his mouth, his tongue pressing hard against the wound to stop the flow of blood.

It was the only kiss John Blythe would ever give her.

Marilla could not decide what discomfited her more; the warm, soft feel of his mouth, or those brilliant blue eyes staring intently at her. But neither could she bring herself to say that she wanted him to stop. Because she did not. And her scrupulous nature forbade any falsehood; then and now.

"John..."

"Don't speak, " he mumbled with her thumb in his mouth, "makes the blood flow faster."

"You, sap!" she said, whisking her hand away and examining the cut.

"Sap, yourself!" John quipped, "You taste like maple syrup."

She rolled her eyes at him, and her heart seemed to somersault too.

"Off to the parlour, with you, before you make me lose another finger!"

**...**

She did make a tart, and more of an effort with her appearance, and when Marilla walked into the parlour some forty minutes later the guests fell upon the food with gratitude.

There were two, however, that were not drawn to the delicious smells at the table; lost in their own place of wonder, where appetites for the small delights of a home cooked meal were dwarfed by their talk of big adventures.

Marilla had been welcomed eagerly by the young men, as they laid waste to the platter she brought over to them. Gideon MacAllister had always been popular, and being three years older than John, was used to having his rapt attention. John's regard for him only increased when Gideon announced he was to go to a Sumatran mission for two years, and experience first hand the kinds of escapades John had only read about. But Marilla soon tired of Gideon's tales, she had heard them recounted just an hour before, and the customs and diets of heathen tribes held little to interest her.

Soon she found herself back in the kitchen, and saw from the window that her brother, too, had skulked away, and was peering into the cabbages in search of mealy worm. Marilla began to think about the blooms she would pick for John to take to his mother, by way of a thank you for the bushel of apples. And if Papa allowed her to take them there herself, so much the better!

Happily Angus Cuthbert had no scruple just then, to deny his girl her little wish. He was holed up happily in the sewing room (which since the death of his wife he had re-designated "The Study" ') where he enjoyed an undisturbed suck on his pipe.

John and Marilla walked silently up the Green Gables drive. Marilla with her arms full of flowers, and her heart with shy, quiet joy; John admiring the tall girl, lightly stepping next to him. He only noticed now -to his shame- that she had changed into her pretty print dress and wore tortoise-shell combs in her hair. Marilla Cuthbert mightn't have the _furs and furbelows _as she called them, that other girls might prize, but she carried herself like a queen; and to walk alone with her now was to feel like the king of the world.

They stopped at the gate, and with a light heart Marilla did as she had not done for years, and stepped upon its lowest rung as John undid the latch, sailing back with it as it opened to the lane.

"Do you want a turn, John?" she asked with uncharacteristic girlishness, as she walked the gate back to its post.

"I want to go further than that old thing can take me,'" he said.

"Whatever do you mean?" Marilla asked, and she handed John the posy, so she could secure the gate.

"Gideon said I could go with him, Rilla, back to the mission at Banda-"

"-Gideon says a lot of things, John. He said where they lived they put _sugar_ on their meat, and _peanuts_ on their boiled eggs! I wouldn't pay much mind to what Gideon says."

"He said they always need lay-people to help with the building and teaching; I could do that, I _know_ I could-"

"But could you do it to your father, John, to your mother?"

_Could you do that to me?_ she wanted to add, but the words refused to leave her lips.

"I wouldn't go forever," he said, more quietly, "but I have to take this chance, Rilla. I thought you'd understand."

He held the flowers out to her, hoping in his boyish way that the girl could not help but come to his way of thinking; would understand him, would wait for him. But Marilla eyed them coldly and refused.

Offering her the _very_ flowers she picked herself, while he boldly told her he meant to leave for some hair-brained notion of adventure! Leave his duty, leave the Island, leave _her_... And she was expected to just wait for the next whim that might or might not bring him back! Was she always to be at the beck and call of men? She was not!

She snatched the flowers from him in a fury, and struck them hard upon his head; a thorn from an old scotch rose snagging on her sliced thumb, so that when the bunch connected little drops of her blood hit the collar of John's shirt.

Did he save the shirt later in hopeful memory; as a token of her fire and his love? He did not. He threw it in with the unlaundered clothes his mother would deal to on Monday, little thinking there would never be another chance to have such a keepsake from her.

It was Marilla who carried the scar. Her thumb healed quickly, but the hurt to her pride festered. She received a note the week before Gideon MacAllister left on the SS Huronic; just two short lines which simply said, 'I won't be going. John Blythe.' No word of a why, no way to know unless she asked, which she guessed was what he expected. Well, she wouldn't do what he expected. A man could wait on _her_ for a change. It was a long lesson in waiting. And she was tired to the bone with it.

"Care to walk me to the graveyard, John?" Marilla asked, "You could leave the platter on this stump, and I'll take it in when I get back."

"I'll get the latch," John said with a small smile, and though Marilla did not stand upon the gate and sail free -the burden in her heart did.

"Been meaning to ask you about your orchard," John said, as he tucked Marilla's arm in his, "I was going to ask today, but Sarah wouldn't have it, talking business at a wedding -not the done thing, it seems."

"Well, the wedding is done and the children are gone..." they both walked in silence for a time to let the thought sink in, "so now's as good a time as any."

They made their way up the lane, Marilla Cuthbert quietly listening to John -the grand ambition that excited him now concerning George Fletcher's cider press. And as Marilla asked the particulars, John Blythe admired the pretty tints of her dress -the vivid colour so unlike anything she had ever worn; he thought he hadn't seen her look so lovely for the longest time.

Too soon they arrived at the graveyard, where Anne's little posy still sat fresh and new upon Matthew's grave. The rows behind were not nearly so cared for. There was one; another pale coloured stone, dedicated to a young man lost at sea, that seemed more green than grey. The name behind the ivy reading Gideon MacAllister.

**For Dannie and the Guest who wanted more about John Blythe... and for Raindropcatcher for the drops (of blood) inspiration**


	8. Chapter 8

**So now we come to the pointy end (ahem) For those looking for more about the Avonlea folk you won't find it in the following chapters, which will be rated either T or M from now on...**

**As always, with love and gratitude to L.M. Montgomery -everything is hers, only this idea is mine.**

"_Why don't you folks tell me to take in the slack of my jaw and go home?" [said Captain Jem.]_

_The laughter of the good-nights died away. Anne and Gilbert walked hand in hand around their garden ...Anne paused in the gloom to gather a spray._

"_I love to smell flowers in the dark," she said, "you get hold of their soul then. Oh Gilbert, this little house is all I've dreamt it. And I'm so glad we are not the first who have kept our bridal tryst here!"_

_Chapter seven, the Schoolmaster's Bride; Anne's House of Dreams_

**Chapter Eight: Yesterday's Girl**

**T **

Gilbert looked at Anne as she walked back to him under a rising moon. The scarlet poppies in her hands cast a radiant blush upon her face; though she did not remind him especially of a bride, just then; for Anne always seemed to have flowers in her hand -that, or a book. It was her words that made him silent.

"You've been quiet too long, Gilbert Blythe," Anne said, taking his hand again. "You barely said a word after supper, though there was plenty you were _trying_ to tell me, I'm sure!"

Gilbert looked down at her suddenly, brought back from a reverie where he did not wish to dwell.

"_Me_?" he asked, with an incredulous tone, "I seem to remember _you_ shooting me all sort of looks at the table. I thought I must have spilled something on my shirt!" and he looked over it again, lifting his tie to inspect it more thoroughly, but it glowed just as clean and white in the moonlight, as it had in the morning when he had first put it on; buttoning it up whilst wondering just whose hands might _un_button it. Well, that question had been fairly answered; now for the next. "Just what _were _you trying to tell me?"

Anne let go his hand and took up the end of his tie, pulling at it teasingly.

"That you're not dressed properly for a start!" she laughed, "Your tie is back to front."

The little label on the grey silk tie, that Anne had given him as a present when he graduated, was facing outwards like a tiny advertising hoarding for Eaton's; giving every impression it had been removed and retied in haste at some point. Gilbert remembered that point vividly, and he shrugged at her with a nonchalance that Anne especially loved.

"And what were _you_ trying to tell _me_?" Anne then asked.

She looked up at him with her grey eyes shining, and Gilbert knew that the thoughts that had seemed sweetly impatient in his head, would suddenly sound selfish once they had been said aloud.

He had wanted their guests to leave, so he could be left to love his wife; not listen just then, to the tales of someone else's love. They had their whole lives to live in Four Winds, with time enough to sit round the fire and swap stories; and the look on Anne's face as she sat and listened to Captain Jem -it was all he could do not to sweep their welcome party out the door! She was the angel of all his yesterdays, and for a long moment it felt as if he was there again.

He grabbed her hand suddenly, and pulled her into the house, the poppies flying from her grasp and laying petals where their feet had been. Anne's laughter filled the darkened rooms, and they whooped and called to each other around the hallway and stairs, like children. All that minding of manners and rules no longer existed for them; they were just a boy and a girl in a little world that was theirs alone -covered in night, a night that promised not an ear would hear, or an eye would see, whatever they might get up to. Though, right then, this sudden freedom was more intoxicating than any more adult desires. Gilbert twirled Anne round, till they were both as giddy without, as they felt within. And she swung through the door to the little sitting room; where the fire was no longer casting merry light upon its walls, but a low and tender glow.

"Sit there!" Gilbert said, with an eager, boyish voice, directing Anne to the place she had sat on the floor earlier that evening; between the fire and the armchair, where Captain Jem had been.

"Whatever for- ?"

"Just sit there, the way you did when you were listening to the Captain. _Just_ like you did..."

Anne remembered. It was easy -it was how she always sat when she gave others her rapt attention; lips pressed together and hands clasped tight beneath her chin.

Gilbert then sat where he had been earlier that evening, nestled in the faded cushions on the window seat; his eyes lingering intently on his wife. Anne tucked her knees up, and wrapped her arms around them. Eyes large and wondering, waiting for whatever Gilbert would do next.

"What is it I am supposed to be doing, exactly?"

"Don't worry, you're doing it." There was an inexplicable tone of excitement in Gilbert's answer, but little explanation.

"Gil! _What_ am I doing?"

"Making another dream come true, is all. Can't a man be greedy sometimes?"

Gilbert went to her now and put his hand to her little pointed chin, and it seemed to him that Anne was all eyes and mouth, and little else. He kissed her so hard she fell back against the rug on the floor!

"Well, that wasn't supposed to happen," Gilbert said with a grin, and lay himself on the floor next to her.

"_Supposed_ to happen?" Anne said, with incomprehension, adjusting her arm so that Gilbert nestled into her more comfortably. "Well, what did you _think_ would happen?"

"Oh..." he fingered a copper tendril by Anne's ear, "it varies."

She batted his hand away, with a playful swipe.

"Varies? How many other women have you kissed into the floor?"

"I mean what _happens_ varies." he laughed, ignoring the second part of her question, "Sometimes you kiss me back, sometimes you don't; but then... you change your mind-"

"I change my mind." It was not said as a question, she was merely trying to make sense of his words.

"Well, they're _my_ day-dreams. When a fellow is already so miserably in love in reality, he would be a fool to dream about rejection too."

"Miserably in love? Really?" Anne turned her head to him, her face brushed against his short cropped curls and tickled her lips.

"All those evenings in your little rooms, at Old St John's and Patty's Place, sitting there laughing and listening, and you... with that beautiful look on your face ...and me... watching you, and not being able to have you..." he brushed her hair back from her forehead, and then looked up at the flickering light on the ceiling. "Sitting there with my Uncle and Aunt, and Captain Jem just now -it just ...brought it all back-"

"But _miserably_ in love?" Anne sounded as though she rather thrilled at the thought.

Gilbert leant up on his elbow and pretended to glare at her, "You know Charlie Sloane was right -you _do_ like a fellow to suffer."

Anne laughed aloud, "Charlie Sloane!"

"He was miserably in love with you too, remember?"

"And no one's ever been in love with you!" Anne countered, Gilbert saw the little flecks of green in her eyes, darting in the firelight.

"You are the only one that ever mattered, Anne." And when he said her name she heard all those years of waiting and hoping.

"It's a good thing you're already on the floor, Gilbert Blythe," Anne responded, and she lifted herself up and drew her face to his, "because I'm going to kiss _you_ now."

He felt the petal soft skin of her mouth brush over the ridge of his lip and his own mouth opened slightly, willing Anne to kiss him deeply, but she would take her time. At first his arms were around her shoulders, and then somehow, he found himself lying back against the rug on the floor and Anne was licking his mouth; the corners and edges, the fine hair around it, aroused and teased with the softest, fluttery movements. And when she heard him make the tiniest of sighs, she withdrew and moved her attention to his earlobe, smiling as he turned his head from her, so that Anne could touch more of him; her tongue darting down his neck before stopping at his collar. His eyes closed once more, and he was lost in the sensation of his wife loosening his tie again, and sliding it slowly from around his neck.

Anne went to the topmost button of his shirt now; it required some concentration as she had only one hand free.

"Men's clothes," Anne murmured, impatiently, "I never dreamed they'd prove as complicated as a woman's." The button was released from its slot, but her fingers stopped their progress "Do you know my favourite memory of _you_, at Redmond?"

"No," he sighed, his eyes still closed to everything but the build up of bliss in his body; never noticing that Anne had sat up. "What-?" Gilbert exclaimed then, rudely stirred from his lassitudes; she was standing over him now, tugging at his hands.

"Time to come with _me_, now..." she laughed, and he moved his body gingerly to standing position, "but first...bend your head a little..." Anne said, wrapping his tie around his eyes.

"Anne, is this really necessary?" The enthusiasm in his voice showed he truly hoped that it was.

"No peeking," she said with mock severity, "Now hold my hand!"

And Gilbert was dragged -only half unwillingly- through the sitting room, the dining room, and the kitchen, and ending up in the tiny pantry. The unexpected destination -tomorrow he would quietly admit that he had expected to be climbing some stairs- and the strange mix of smells; of carbolic, molasses and Anne, confused Gilbert completely. More so when she let go of him then, and he felt her place something over his head.

"Don't move-" Anne was laughing harder now, with a brook-like giggle, that he felt in her hands, as she tied 'the something' round his waist.

"Anne, what in heck-"

"Nearly finished, dearest darling ...there!" and Anne whipped off the tie and stood back from his reach.

Gilbert looked down and rolled his eyes; he was wearing a worn and faded apron that had been left behind in the pantry, with old stores of dry-goods and preserving jars.

Anne tilted her head, one sweetly arched eyebrow cocked cheekily over her eye.

"You know, Gilbert Blythe, I think I prefer this one to that old calico one the 'Lambs' made you wear; florals don't suit you half so well as polkadots. Now, to find a bonnet-"

"Don't. You. Dare..." Gilbert threatened, taking a step toward Anne with every word, and Anne taking an equal number backwards. Then, upon spying the jars filled with things he might use to take his revenge, she dashed from the kitchen with a lighthearted squeal.

He chased her through the house, tugging at the strings behind him, so that he did not run so fast as he would have liked: for a man can not negotiate the ways of an apron nearly so well as the woman who has knotted it -and Anne could run like a deer. She was in the garden, now, backing away from him, excitedly, into long dark shadows that the moon above cast on the forest behind her.

The apron was loose in his hands now, and he threw it across the fair distance still between them, where it landed at her feet.

"I'm beginning to think, Anne Blythe-" he swallowed then, as if speaking her name made him forget what he would say next, "that you like me in girl's clothes."

She was barely able to speak for the giggle inside her, and the salty breeze that rushed round their bodies, seemed to tickle the very trees to laughter.

"You gave me something else once, I recall," Gilbert said, in a steady, even voice that belied his own excitement. "At first I thought it must have been a handkerchief it was that small; but it was this tiny, lacy, white chemise..."

Even under the white light of the moon, even under the shadows of night, Gilbert knew his wife was blushing; he saw the look on her face and he knew.

"You know the reason I didn't let you unbutton my shirt on the train -all the way I mean- was because I didn't want you to know that ...I'm wearing it right now."

"Gilbert, I know very well-"

"Don't believe me?"

He began to unbutton his shirt, though with such disregard for the buttons this time, that ripping his shirt would have described it more accurately.

Anne stood, staring. The sea breeze swelled and mingled with the trees; she breathed in a pine scented wind that blew against her body and played with her hair. And then with the next breath; the smell of apple-leaves, long grass and hot scorched linen -that was Gilbert's indefinable, unforgettable own- came to her, seemed to enter her; till he seemed, somehow, _inside_ her! How else to explain this adrenalin that vaulted through her veins; that seemed almost masculine in quality.

Even as Gilbert tugged the shirt from his arms and dropped it to the lawn, and she beheld for the first time his lean, fine boned body -the knotted muscles at his shoulders, and braided ones on his arms, and his chest; as milk-white as the moon that admired him; that painted shadows on his skin, defining every line- Anne felt, inexplicably, that she could take him on. And she backed away into the trees, not out of fear; but because of the damage she might do.

Until, that is, he walked toward her. And Anne saw that strength, come to life; saw it writhe under his skin as he moved. Things that seemed as shadow, revealing secrets she had only guessed about. His nipples were browner than hers, and surrounded by a few dark hairs that met in a little patch at his heart, then began again at his navel, and disappeared into the waist of his grey trousers; the legs within, moving him closer and closer toward her.

Anne became aware of the pine trees behind her needling through her skirts; and the ones within her body too, that pricked at her with an infinite fineness, in a balance between fear and desire.

Gilbert stopped, so close now he need only put his arm out to touch her.

"You're not wearing it at all," Anne finally managed to say.

She was looking at his chest, his nipples grew smaller and tighter, though whether because of the cool night air or her own hot breath she couldn't guess. It was fascinating to Anne, to see how much a man's and a woman's body were alike; she found herself wondering if he would like it as much as she did when they were touched.

"Disappointed?" Gilbert asked.

Anne cast her eyes over him again, "N-no, not at all," she said, with a look on her face that dared him to contradict her, "It couldn't have survived you squeezing into it, you would have rent it in two."

"Don't worry, Anne. It's still very much intact." She saw a sweet red blush upon his own cheek now, "I can't tell you what it meant to me -to have that piece of you ...the smell of you," Gilbert added shyly, "when we were apart."

He didn't have to tell her, Anne could fairly imagine what she would have done with Gilbert's shirt, had she ever had one in her keeping.

"I've got it here," Gilbert said, "I brought it with me... and I know, I know," he said, putting his hands on her shoulders; it felt like another world to be so enclosed in his smooth, bare skin, "that you probably have some beautiful nightgown you'd been planning to wear..." he swallowed hard before he could say the next word- "tonight. But, if I might be so bold as to ask for another dream to come true, would you... would you wear it, Anne?"

Such was her desire for him; she felt she would have walked the two miles to Glen St Mary and waited till the haberdashers opened so she could purchase the muslin, and cut and sew through the day to make a _new_ chemise, if he had asked her to. But she only nodded at him.

He drew his arms down and went to take her hand. And Anne had a sudden vision of how she would like him to find her, and how that meant he mustn't follow.

"Wait," she looked up at him with the tiniest smile on her lips, knowing how vexing he found this particular word. "Just wait here, and then come to me in a few minutes."

Gilbert let go her hand again, seeming to understand. And watched every step she took as she walked away from him, and entered the wide open door of their house.

…

**Don't worry there's no meanwhile back at the farm scene after this teaser ending -would I do that to Gilbert? Hmmm, perhaps... but I won't do to to you, dear readers. **

**My heartfelt thanks to you all for taking the time to read my story, and especially for leaving a comment! **

**I love finding out what you think, even if it's just to point out a typo ;o)**


	9. Chapter 9

**M: the story below contains explicit sexual content that our grandmothers might have described as "heavy petting" -as Anne and Gilbert learn to become lovers. **

**Again, no quote that leads to this chapter as it follows directly from the previous, but here's another 'killing' quote (as Phil might say) to help set the scene.**

"_She was his at last, this evasive, long sought Anne, won after years of patient waiting. It was to him she was coming, in the sweet surrender of the bride. Was he worthy of her? Could he make her as happy as he hoped? If he failed her- if he could not measure up to her standard of manhood..."_

_from chapter four; the First Bride of Green Gables; Anne's House of Dreams_

**Chapter Nine: Yesterday's Boy**

It is unknown how Gilbert Blythe spent those minutes; if they seemed like years to him, or passed like the shadow of a branch in the breeze. But whether or not he debated the removal of his remaining articles of clothing, or he tugged them off with the naturalness he felt at the swimming hole in summer; he arrived at their bedroom shoeless, sockless and beltless, and was undoing the bone button at his waist when he beheld his bride in their bed.

The windows were opened, and the lengths of lace at the window fluttered like a bridal veil. She was lying on her side with her back to him, adorned in a little shift of gauzy fineness that fell softly from her shoulder and lingered round her thighs. She was the Anne that had haunted him, achingly, wonderfully, since that night last Easter, when she had asked him to lie with her. And he had refused, regretfully and with considerable pain.

Wanting and refusing seemed to be Gilbert's lot; seemed to be what his desire was forever bound in. And Anne had understood, had seen it perfectly as only Anne could, that finally, now, he could untie his love for her and show it freely.

His trousers slipped from his hips and fell to the floor, he left them there and climbed upon the bed. She was here, his sweet girl, his own, and he didn't have to stop anymore. Gilbert pressed his body into her; shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, thigh to thigh, and his finger traced a blissful line along her silhouette.

Anne nestled into him with a thumping heart. She had expected to feel that hardness push against her soft rounded bottom, and had also expected to be thrilled and intimidated by this in equal measures. But it was the sound Gilbert made; his shivery breathing and slow soft murmurs that came straight from his own heart, that astonished her just then. She felt melted and powerful at the same time.

If this was the mystery spoken about, then Anne Blythe was living it now.

She turned toward him, and Gilbert placed tiny kisses by her ear and cheek; his lips hot and dry upon her skin. Anne, having long wanted that mouth, and his touch, upon the parts of her body forever denied him, then reached for his hand, as it played with the fabric that stretched over her hip, and brought it to her breast. A shared little sigh escaped from them both, as he slipped his fingers under the chemise, and touched her bare skin for the first time.

Anne's breast fell slightly into her other as she lay on her side, so that Gilbert could almost take them both in his hand, and, as he squeezed them gently, she couldn't help but wonder if they were as he expected. Anne had noticed, as all young girls are apt to; much in the way they compare their sleeves and hats, that her breasts had neither the lovely, soft fullness of Diana, or the shapely buxom quality of Phil. Hers seemed to jut out like rose tipped cones; and the way they jiggled -Marilla had insisted upon the very stiffest bones in her corsetry! Altogether, Anne wondered if she was too pointed, too small -too _unlike_ the luscious girl in the daguerrotype that she found in Gilbert's dresser; when she went to tie her letters up for him, but then thought of a better use for the silk ribbon.

A hot flush fused through her then, thinking too much of what _he_ thought, and not enough of what _she_ felt; until Gilbert ignited this heat into fire. His touch changed now; from how she imagined a man would want to touch a woman -how she wanted it herself, when she wore so many layers, and had so little time. Instead, he withdrew his hand, and then, with a touch that was all Gilbert, lightly swept across the sensitive skin of her breasts and her nipples in exquisite, feathery strokes with the flat of his palm. As if he instinctively knew how this woman he held, this beloved woman with her darling small, pointed breasts, would sigh and quiver all the more if he touched her this way.

Her nipples were so hard, it felt to Gilbert as though the tip of a finger drew hotly across his hand. He brought his own fingers to them then, pinching them softly, while kissing her neck and shoulder -concentrating everything into his movements so that he might ignore his own response to her- as she arched her back, and pushed her bottom and hips against him with a growing abandonment.

"Oh, oh Gil..." Anne said at last, "it feels, oh it feels so _blissful_ when you do that, don't stop."

Upon which Gilbert could do nothing else but stop; her words, her sounds, her movement -and knowing that he was the cause of them- turned the ache in his body to a very agony.

Anne soon became aware he had stopped moving, and that deep, long sighs of air were coming from his nose and throat. It was a hot and heedless girl who reached for his hand and pressed it into her again. Gilbert renewed his touches, but a little more roughly then; impatient, fervent strokes upon her breasts and ribs and then downward to her belly, where he kneaded and played upon a lovely girlish softness so unlike his own. Then his hand travelled further down, to where one would discover soft curls that were very much of a woman, and again he stopped his hand; resting it lightly upon her hip once more, as he resumed small pecks upon her neck and ear.

"Gilbert, this feels so nice..." Anne said, nuzzling into the muscled cradle of his neck and shoulder. Nice did not begin to say how she felt; for the first time in her life words failed Anne, and she could not even bring herself to mind.

But the words raced through Gilbert, words that begged him to stay in control; he was so hard, so achingly hard for her now, he felt if she but whispered her lithe little hand over him he would not be able to stop himself; and would be brought to climax before they'd ever begun.

He remembered with a wry regret, the words of Charlie and Fred on a night before the wedding; joking with a knowing air that Gil had better have a stiff drink or two before he took his bride to bed, lest her maidenhood was took before her drawers were properly down. Gilbert had laughed, with more than a little smugness; feeling those two had no concept of the degree of self control he had -for Anne was no demure maid, but a woman of fire and dew, who eagerly placed her hands on him at every opportunity.

He believed he could resist all before him, and perform manfully and skilfully with no thought of anything, but satisfying the desires of his wife. But Gilbert had sorely underestimated the affect Anne's desire would have upon him. The volcanic way Anne moved and responded, and her sounds; the mysterious sounds that expressed all she felt and needed, made him feel both a god and a fool at her feet. He began to doubt whether any man could be enough for Anne.

"You're quiet again, my love," Anne said; both in touch and in voice, she noticed.

"I'm just... happy-"

"Yes, I can definitely feel how happy you are," she quipped, huskily, "But what is it, Gil?" she shifted her hips and turned to him now; he was as unprepared for the dazed look of pleasure on her face, as he was everything else.

Anne's hair was still pinned, but the intricate twists and curls of the virgin bride were sexily mussed about her head; the gauzy strap of her chemise down by her elbow so that the top of her nipple peeped out, as her eyes peeped out at him from under her hair. She was shining and filled with love.

"I know this happiness, Gilbert Blythe, you've spoken of it before." Anne said, lightly, referring to the night at the bonfire, when Gilbert declared his happiness whilst pressed firmly and hotly between the legs of his girl. "It's the happiness that believes that happiness cannot last -and is all the more sweeter for it."

"That, by its very definition, _is_ happiness", Gilbert responded, and he traced his fingers over her hip bone and into the hollow that smoothed out to her stomach; feeling for her bellybutton under the sheer muslin slip, and on finding it, beginning a small spiral with a slow and focussed hand.

"Oh, Gil," she groaned, "how do you expect me to keep talking, when your fingers are driving me to distraction?"

"So, don't talk," Gilbert replied, kissing her.

Anne fell back then, and felt his tongue against hers, his hands drawing circles wider and wider over her abdomen, until it grazed between her legs; the same soft feathery touch she had felt on her breast, and she shuddered with a similar intensity.

Waiting; for his hand to lift the hem of her chemise. Waiting; and she shifted her thighs apart in shy, excited increments. Waiting; as she pulsed and swelled with lush anticipation. Waiting; with fear and excitement, for Gilbert to discover her. Waiting...

"It's alright, Gil, I want you to."

"I want to, too, Anne. You don't know- you don't know how much..."

"Are you... afraid?"

"I'm a lot of things right now, Anne, but afraid is definitely not one of them," he said, with a smile on his lips that was not in his eyes.

Anne brought her legs together and looked at her husband with a look of adoring concern.

"I _saw_ that look on your face, you know, after we farewelled your Uncle and Aunt, and Captain Jem-"

"That wasn't fear, that was relief-"

"When I picked those flowers," Anne continued, ignoring his remark, "those ruby-red poppies, and then began a meandering talk about the spirits of flowers..."

"Souls, you said souls of flowers," Gilbert said, quietly.

"You were thinking about the day I refused you, weren't you? You were remembering that day in the orchard when you wanted to propose to me, and I tried to draw your attention to the asters-"

"-they were violets. You know, I can't bear them now. I'm so glad that you never wear Water of Violet," he said, moving closer to her neck to smell the lily-of-the-valley scent Anne liked to dab behind her ear, and the hollow at her throat.

As he drew back from her she looked into his eyes. "And when I spoke of flowers tonight, you thought I was trying to distract you again, you thought I was trying to avoid another er... confrontation."

Gilbert smiled again, and this time Anne could see he meant it.

"You funny girl," he said, moving his hand to her cheek and caressing it tenderly, "I never thought that, Anne, never, I swear. It did make me think of that day ...at the orchard, and for a moment I remembered, and then just as quickly I let that memory go. All those boys of yesterday, they're all in me; but the only one I _want_ to be is the one that's here, now...with you.

"And you want to touch me?"

"Yes!"

"And you're not afraid?"

"Yes." Gilbert could see Anne still didn't know if he was or he was not. "I am afraid; afraid I won't live up to your idea of manhood."

In actuality, Anne had been quietly impressed with it, his length and firmness had not escaped her notice; but this she could mention at another time.

Her hands went to his cheek, it felt slightly rough now, and she found the thought of watching him shave on the morrow somehow thrilling. Her fingers travelled through his short brown curls, and the thicker whiskers that grew in little sideburns by his ears. He was not that boy anymore; on the outside at least. But when she looked into his hazel eyes, he was: the boy who had riled and excited and challenged her. The same boy who was asking her now, as he had never let himself before; to love him as he was. Completely.

"You're afraid to let go. You're afraid to be free," Anne said.

"How is it you're not?" And his tone revealed he had wondered this about her for a very long time. "How is it that you never have been? From the moment I met you... you have always been so determinedly, so infuriatingly, yourself."

He had that look in his eye, this exasperated spark, that she always saw when she bested him at something. On another day Anne might have laughed, or warned him to duck for cover. But this was not another day; it was their wedding night. She inhaled deeply and brushed her hair behind her ear, casting her eye about the room, looking for the words to say to him now. The lace curtain at the window seemed to breathe in and out with the breeze, pulsing in time with her heart.

"I suppose," Anne said at last, "because I was always losing people, people I'd let myself care about. And I became determined that I should rely upon myself, determined to be true to my ideals. Only," and she began to laugh then, "I didn't know how to go about it in the right way... I got into a _lot_ of scrapes, and I followed the wrong path sometimes, but then ...I found my way to you, Gilbert. And from that moment I just knew somehow, that whatever I did, you would love me-"

"I do love you, Anne, I want you so much, it's just-"

"You're afraid to let go...it's not so easy when you're the one hanging on to that bridge for dear life, is it?" He smiled at her. "Just let yourself reach for me, Gilbert Blythe." Anne brought her hand down to his and squeezed it lovingly.

She felt his fingers tremble lightly under hers, "I want to, I want to, Anne, but what if..." his voice a raw whisper.

"We have our whole life time to get this right, remember? Tonight, just touch me; just touch me and let go. I want you to see me let go. I want, I want so very much, to see _you_ let go..."

Anne placed her hand between his legs, now, and he flinched and shivered as her fingers whispered over the hard length that pressed inside his underwear. Anne was as excited as she was fascinated; instinctively grasping him, sliding up and down with slow strokes. Gilbert lay back and closed his eyes for a moment, relishing his wife touching him for the first time; enjoying the tantalising pleasure that was not of his own making.

"Can I, could we... take these off?" Anne asked, quietly.

He shifted away from her again, "Just... soon, my love," he said, and then brought his own hand to Anne's hip, and then to her thigh, and then slowly pulled up the fabric of her chemise so it gathered at her waist.

"I'm red there too, in case you wondered" she said, and Gilbert smiled at the tiny sound of vexation in her voice, "I don't know if you can tell in this light."

"I did wonder, my darling girl..." he placed a soft lingering kiss upon her lips while he pressed his palm against her, cupping her gently; she felt hot and swollen and the curls were soft and damp. The urgent, quivering kisses Gilbert gave her then, telling Anne how much she was adored. She pressed her hand against his, firmly.

"Like this, touch me like this," Anne whispered into his mouth, and she felt a long, deep groan enter hers.

"Anne, oh Anne. Please don't speak..." But she didn't have to, the way her body moved and responded to him told him everything. At first she resumed stroking him with a tender concentration; but when she felt his fingers graze inside her softly, Anne began to shiver, wrapping her leg around his, and gripping Gilbert more roughly and distractedly.

"My love, my love," he removed his hand from between her legs and clamped it hard against her frenzied movements, "please, oh Anne, if you do that... I won't be able to stop myself..."

Anne opened her eyes to him now, the smallest circle of grey around a deep shining black, with lengths of her fiery hair fallen about her shoulders, and his. The chemise, by this time, was hitched up roughly round her armpits, and a tiny sheen of sweat lay between her breasts. She pulled his hand back urgently; she was so wet now his palm felt damp as soon as he touched her.

"Don't stop... Gil. If, if you don't stop, I'm going to have this incandescent feeling in a moment..." She spoke of her body as she might have spoken of the souls of flowers -it melted Gilbert's heart.

"But if I don't stop, Anne, I'm going to have one myself..."

A brilliant gleam washed the hazy lust from Anne's eye, she grabbed at his underpants and pulled them down over his waist and bottom awkwardly. With a little, shy manoeuvring Gilbert was naked, and there was nothing shy in what Anne saw then.

"You are beautiful, Gilbert Blythe," Anne leaned over, so that her red hair brushed over his chest, and she kissed the tip of him.

"Anne-!"

"Now kiss me, here," she lay back again, pointing to her love-flushed face, "And whatever you do... whatever _I_ do... _don't_ _stop_."

"I can only do that if you _stop_ _talking_..."

And though their bodies then said many things, as they shared their secret ecstasies, not another word was uttered for the longest time.

**...**


	10. Chapter 10

"_...then, as she held out her hand, their eyes met and all doubt was swept away in a glad certainty..."_

_from chapter four, the First Bride at Green Gables; Anne's House of Dreams_

**Chapter ten: the Garden of Night**

**T**

Anne nestled into Gilbert's arm, playing with the fine hairs on his chest, and drawing her fingers over his skin, like a hand on a velvet jacket. The soft even breaths he took, the dark lashes lying upon his cheek; his was of the very sleep of angels, and she smiled, even as she prepared to wake him up.

"Gil?"

"Mmmm."

"I can't sleep..."

"Come here, " he said, still half in dreams, and pulled her closer to him, before he drifted off once more.

Anne's head now rested upon his breast and she listened to the beats of his heart, as she rose and fell with its rhythm. Her hand now circling one of his nipples, and she grazed and teased it distractedly, noticing that even in sleep his body still responded to her. She breathed in deeply the smell of their new togetherness; made of heat and tenderness, salty skin and damp sheets.

She looked up now, at her beloved's face; he slept with the curl of a smile on his lips and his wife's hand clasped in his. And then she looked up further; she hadn't meant to -but when one decides not to look at something it invariably becomes the only thing the eye will seek- and Anne stared at it now.

She shuddered. She first noticed it, when -as it happens when bodies are finding out about each other- Anne found herself facing the head of the bed- and given the nature of her distraction, she was able to put what she'd seen to the back of her mind. But now, as she lay there under that hideous thing, it played on her thoughts like a mosquito in the bedroom.

Anne let go of Gilbert's hand and began pinching at his nipples more intensely.

"Hey, Anne!" he exclaimed; that area of his chest had experienced more attention in the last few hours than they had in his entire life, and consequently, were rather sensitive to her touch.

"Oh, Gil. Did I wake you, again?" Anne said, without the least intention of letting him go back to sleep.

"Still can't sleep?" Gilbert yawned, stretching his chest in a strong, broad movement, so that Anne soon found herself back at his shoulder again.

"It's that _thing_ above us; it's keeping me awake."

Gilbert listened out for the clock, which he supposed was what Anne was referring to, even though he was fairly certain there had not been one in the list of chattels he'd purchased from the previous owner. He looked up then, but saw only the large brass bed-head. It was a fine, early Victorian example, with a hand-painted enamel of basket of flowers set in the centre of the brass posts. Those flowers, he thought, had seemed like an omen -so this was to be their marriage bed! It seemed like a promising sign.

"What thing, Anne?" he yawned, his eyes blinked slowly and he pulled at the sheet around his hips, preparing to fall asleep again.

"What thing? You just looked at it!" Anne sat up now, sweeping her hair over her bare breasts, and pointing directly at the floral enamel on their bed. It was a dark and gothic thing, almost funereal, and worse. If one looked at it, if one were _particularly_ imaginative that is, they might make out a shape that looked for all the world like a skull -made of olde world roses and peonies, but still- to some at least, and one very definitely in this bed, it had the very look of death.

"I can't begin to sleep when I keep thinking of that ...that _death-head_ sitting just above us!"

"Death-head! What on earth... Anne! Do you mean those _flowers_? I thought you'd find them pretty; when I saw this bed, I thought -now if there's such a thing as kindred furniture then, Gilbert Blythe, you've just discovered it," his tired, husky laugh turned into another yawn.

"Kindred furniture!" Anne said, scornfully, "this is not funny, Gil. I cannot go on sleeping here."

"Then don't sleep," Gilbert replied, and he swept her thick red hair over her shoulder and gazed at her. Anne looked for all the world like Anderson's mermaid, though one with her tongue very much intact.

She cupped her hands over herself, which did little to decrease Gilbert's desire, and looked down at him fiercely.

"How can you say that? I can't bear to think of what that ghastly thing has already seen-"

"Anne, it's a _bed_!"

"And I'm not sleeping in it." Anne leapt from the bed now and drew the tangled sheet up to her with a vigorous tug. Gilbert saw then, that she meant it.

"It's connected with little bolts," he said, scooting up and examining the enamel now, eager to get his wife out of that sheet and back in his arms. "I could probably twist it round, so you wouldn't see it-"

"No. It wouldn't make any difference, Gil, I'd _know_ it was there."

"Then... there's only one thing for it," he leapt out of bed, too, "you like the mattress, I suppose?" It had served them valiantly so far, so Anne had no cause to reject it as harshly. Besides which, it was brand new.

Anne nodded mutely, unsure where her husband's thoughts would lead.

"Good! Then if you don't like the bed, my girl, we'll just find another place to sleep."

He tugged at the mattress then, it was almost comical to see a naked man moving the furniture. It _was_ comical! Anne stifled a giggle, as she wrapped her sheet about her, and helped him push the mattress off the bed.

The upstairs already had another bed, a narrow single that lived in the smallest room. The spare room had yet to be furnished, the previous owner not inclined to part with the valuable piece that had been housed there; though Gilbert could fairly guess which bed would end up in there now.

They had tugged the mattress into the hallway, and were manoeuvring it round the stairwell; Anne as much a help as a hinderance, both pushing and dissolving in fits of laughter. At some point, Gilbert, expecting her to have a firm hold, leaned the bulk of the mattress's weight against her, while he turned around. In the next moment the mattress had juddered down the stairs.

The two clambered down after it, Anne clutching her falling sheet, and laughing loudly at the sight of a naked Gilbert racing down the steps.

"No damage done," he said, examining the ticking.

"Yes," breathed Anne, as she tucked her sheet firmly under her arms, "but now we have to get this unwieldy thing back up again!"

"We could take it outside."

Anne looked out through the small panes of glass at the top of their door -their _own_ front door!- at the black silhouettes of Lombardies that beckoned to her from the garden. They _could_ sleep outside; they could indeed. There was, after all, no one to pour scorn on such a suggestion, no one to tell them why not, no one to say no.

"Gilbert Blythe, I could kiss you!" and she did, in places she had never dared kiss until this night.

"I always wanted to sleep outdoors with you, Anne," he laughed, " and I _know_ you've always-"

"- _dreamed_ of it!" Anne said, with girlish delight. "I'll go fetch the pillows and quilt," she added, but not before she opened her sheet and wrapped it round Gilbert's waist.

Then, when her husband should have been pulling their bed outside, he watched her slender form scurry back up the stairs; her ruddy locks brushing cheekily across the small of her back, and tickling her bottom.

They were lying together now, after brief consultations about where their bed should be situated – Anne preferring to be near the flowerbeds so that they might enjoy the perfume, and Gilbert closer to the trees so they could enjoy the most privacy. In the end they chose the position that afforded the best view of the stars.

"So you always wanted to sleep outside with me, I never knew," Anne said, settling into her place which had already become so comfortably familiar; her cheek at his shoulder, his chin on her head.

"Anytime I'm outside I think of you, oh dryad!"

And she had never seemed more like a nymph of nature than she did right now -hair falling loose around her bare shoulders, wrapped in a sheet, and lying under the canopy of heaven.

"Oh, Gil, look at those stars, it feels like the sky, itself, is happy for us -like little angels peering down from heaven," Anne sighed.

And not a death-head to be seen, Gilbert thought to himself.

"Did you ever you think they might be little children?" Anne asked, stifling a tiny yawn.

"The stars? I think they're giant masses of light and heat, Anne, beyond that, no one knows."

"When I lived at Morley, a matron there, Missusabberley-"

"Missusabber- what? That was quite a handle for the poor, old dear."

"Poor and old she might have been, but hardly a dear," Anne began, twisting a length of her hair about her fingers, "I never knew her name, never knew if it was Mrs Abberley or Miss Sassaberley -you learn very quickly not to ask questions; questions are an impertinence in an asylum, you know- if I didn't have my little Violetta there would have been no one to answer my questions at all."

Gilbert tried to recall a friend of Anne's, any friend of Anne's, that she'd had before she came to Avonlea. It was not a name that he ever remembered her mentioning; but he put his own question to one side for now, and continued listening.

"-so in my mind she was always Missusabberley," Anne continued, "and that way I never got in trouble for mispronouncing it; you learn quickly not to make mistakes in an asylum too."

Gilbert hugged his wife to him protectively, knowing that a girl like her -prone to asking so many questions and making so many mistakes- must have found herself on the wrong side of Missusabberley and her ilk, far too much for his liking.

"We used to have these fire-drills some nights; some of the folks at Morley were awfully reluctant about it, but asylums and orphanages always had a terrible habit of burning down. And so the bell would be rung, and off we'd trudge, and on clear nights the skies were just like this. And I remember Missusabberley telling us that stars were the souls of good children, and the most we could ever hope to be in God's eyes, was another star in his sky."

"Anne, that's horrific-"

"I think, in her way, she meant to be kind -at least the liquor in her blood used to soften her, somewhat. But you can imagine," Anne continued quickly, "I thought it the highest ambition in my little eight year old heart, to be a star amongst the firmament. But, when I grew up," said the girl of the ripe old age of twenty-five, "I began to think maybe Missusabberley knew something after all -not that the stars are our own dead looking down on us, but the souls of children -waiting to be born."

An exhilarating, and sacred chill went through them, then, and Gilbert kissed Anne's head gently, and held her tighter still.

"Shall we... if we have a daughter, Anne -would you like to call her Violetta?" he asked her.

Anne drew the feathery end of her twisted hair to his nose, and tickled it lightly.

"You don't like violets, Gilbert Blythe, you said as much yesterday." It _had_ been yesterday; and a _new_ day, one that was theirs to savour in whatever way they chose -every sweet hour of it- lay before them now with all the possibility and promise of a new born babe. "It's very sweet of you, my dear, but I've outgrown Violetta, just as I've outgrown Katie Maurice and Rosamund and Cordelia-"

"Cordelia too? -but Diana's daughter is Cordelia."

"Well... I do admit I will always have a soft spot for Cordelia... though I can never have one now, I suppose -not that I mind of course; a Cordelia is _much_ better as a crow than a carrot." Anne said, nudging her husband slyly, "But Violetta and Katie, even the fair Rosamund in a way; they were only my imaginary friends."

Gilbert stared out at the stars, tracing the constellations over the sky. "You know," he said, "I once had an imaginary friend, myself."

"_You_, Doctor Blythe? Never!"

"Though I hadn't your knack for such rarified names-"

Anne rolled up onto her elbow and looked at him, intrigued, "And what did you call him?"

"Rose."

"Gil, that's a girl's name-"

"And so she was," Gilbert said, "I suppose I must have been missing my mother."

"But your mother's name isn't Rose."

"No, Rose was just the prettiest name a ten year old boy could think of. She used to play with me when father was sleeping, and he slept a lot... and we, I mean _I,_ invented all these elaborate games with cards and checkers and chess. It got quite competitive, actually-"

"I can imagine," Anne said, with a knowing smile. "Was this when your father was ill, when you were living in Alberta?"

"It was still Fort Macleod then, just a frontier outpost, really. There were none of those grand sanatoriums they have now. Father and I were pretty much left on our own, and I saw first hand what poverty could drive a fellow to." Gilbert turned away from the stars then, and looked at his wife. "I was there, you know, when the Mounted Police routed all the settlements and reservations, trying to stamp out all the bootlegging. The drink caused so much needless pain and misery ...I can't bear to think that you were at the mercy of such people, Anne."

He gazed at her intensely, as though he wanted to find and heal her wounded little heart. How to tell him that she didn't need saving from yesterday; it was tomorrow -_tomorrow with all the promise and possibility of a new born babe_- that would bless that old pain with new joy.

She couldn't tell him; she scarcely knew it herself. Anne took his hand then, and kissed each finger, like the points of a star in the sky.

"You forget, my darling man, that you married a dryad. We are the daughters of flowers -and flowers _always_ grow toward the light."

"I haven't forgotten, I know who you are, _Mrs_ Blythe. But someone still needs to protect that light for you. And when I came to know you and we finally became friends, I knew then what I was made for, what I was meant to do with my life; to keep people from harm."

"Protect the light," Anne repeated softly. "Is that why you decided to be a doctor at Four Winds; because of the the light-house?"

"Like the way my father chose to go Fort Macleod, in the hope of getting well again? -it was my mother's name, you know... Anne, I don't know, " Gilbert said, quietly stroking his wife's red hair. "But it will make a fine story for our children if it's true, so let's say that it's so."

Anne lay down against his arm again, and looked up at the sky; the feel of Gilbert's hand and the night scented air, it sang through her body like a lullaby. She yawned languorously, almost too tired now to even stretch a limb.

"And if one of them is a daughter," she said sleepily, "shall we call her Rose?"

"Let's have one for every flower in our garden, and for every star in the sky."

Anne gave a quiet smile, too tired now to even raise one eyebrow against the thought of such a family. The night sky too, retired to bed; a coral-coloured blanket tucked up over it by the sun's warm hand, rising in the east.

"The children in the sky, Gil -they're gone," Anne murmured.

The stars above them faded just as they did in her own grey eyes, and she closed them now and gave herself to sleep.

Gilbert looked at Anne in the dawn light, and the longing and love he felt for her had never been equalled. The child that cried at the pond, the boy turned to stone by her rejection, and the hot fool who took her to bed, could never have understood what he came to know now; what it meant for a man to love this woman. He wanted to wake her, he felt now he was ready to make love to her; and thoughts of performance and gratification and fear had no hold over him; had no meaning.

He understood now what it would mean to be inside her. He believed, now, that he belonged there. This was what Anne had meant, on the night before their wedding, when she had said she wanted for them to be more when they were together than when they were apart. Yes, his body wanted her; even after all those incandescent hours, his body would always want Anne. But it was his heart that was ready for her now. The heart that wanted to unite with Anne's, and make a child with Anne, and protect her forever.

Anne slept. And the man he was could let her. Gilbert decided then, that by the next dawn he would marry her, the way she dreamed of being married to him. He would find her a birch cathedral and fill it with a thousand rose blooms. He would make all her dreams come true, too.

**...**

**Darley**- Hello! Nice to meet you. You made my night too!

**Raindropcatcher**- that was my favourite part too. When I was thinking about Gil's POV after she refused him, that image was all I could think of -sigh...

**Guest**- breakfast, noon and night! That sounds like my day too. A kindred spirit!

**Alinya**- you know I think I wrote ch 7 with you in mind :o)

**HMA**- and I shall not keep you waiting, but then maybe I will...

**Jenn**- welcome, welcome to a fellow Windy Willows grrrrl! It has so much scope for the imagination, doesn't it? ;o) thanks for noticing and appreciating all the details; btw I am an editing freak -I love a semi-colon more than I love tormenting Gilbert Blythe

**Insubfreak**- you know with a totally math name like yours I am kind of surprised you liked ch7 so much – it means double portions of cherry pie to me! And steam! Oh, you don't know the half of it...

**GoDons** -you're my kind of girl

**Guest **-hello guest with a g! thank you thank you for your thoughtful comments. That was exactly what I was trying to get across -the very first quote in the very first AoGG described a girl of "fire and dew." This is Anne- she goes after everything with her whole heart and her whole body and damn what the neighbours think. That's why I love her so much :o)

**Syncchick **-spare a thought for poor old Gilbert! But I'm glad you thought it was getting good, I hope this didn't disappoint too much.


	11. Chapter 11

**M: this chapter contains explicit sexual content about which our grandmothers might have said 'you put your mouth where, dear?' (or even your cherry!)**

**As these remaining chapters concern the time alluded to by Montgomery at the beginning of chapter 8 there are no quotes for this story to lead into. The quote below is what Anne was thinking when she thought about her honeymoon -and conveys more in those few lines than my thousands could ever say... But I had fun trying ;o)**

"_There was a certain tang of romance and adventure in the atmosphere of their new home which Anne had never found in Avonlea. There, although she had lived in sight of the sea, it had not entered intimately into her life. In Four Winds it surrounded her and called to her constantly... the sea called ever to the dwellers on the shore, and even those who might not answer its call felt the thrill and unrest and mystery and possibilities of it."_

_from chapter eight; Miss Cornelia Bryant Comes to Call, Anne's House of Dreams_

**Chapter 11: Time and Tide**

An intense heat hummed through the window of a little white cottage in the Four Winds harbour. On the deep wooden bench fitted into it, amongst sun-softened cushions and Mrs Lynde of Avonlea's famous tobacco striped quilt, lay a woman whose hair would seem to welcome the sun's attention. But she did not. The hastily drawn blinds hinted at her impatience, and the faded blue cushion on her face positively shouted the fact. Anne Blythe was not yet ready to greet the new day.

She had a hazy memory of being carried inside by her husband at some point that morning. In another week Anne would have known, by the way the shadows hit the house, that the hour was nine. But being new to these environs, she had little idea how much time had passed since then, what time it was now, or even what season -for it seemed to her far too hot for September! She rubbed her eyes and squinted crossly at the curtains. They were as faded as the cushions, and as well used to this bright light as the girl underneath them was not.

Rumbling to her side she looked upon the floor, and spied a sight that Faerie itself might have left her, such was its power to enchant. A tall glass of elderflower cordial, twelve perfect cherries in a sky blue bowl, and a cut glass vase of poppies. Their petals seemed to gape at Anne indecently, and another unwelcome flash went through her then, as she blushed hotly at the sight of them.

The cordial took its effect, however, and, though it was not as cold as she might have wished, Anne was soon revived; plumped up on the cushions and crushing red fruit in her mouth. Soon her thoughts turned to Gilbert, as she drew a smooth red globe across her mouth; popping it between her lips, and curling her tongue around it; until, unable to resist anymore, she crushed it between her teeth and sucked on the stone. She was about to deposit it into the little bowl when she noticed Gilbert's note.

"darling Wife," it said, in his lovely, loose scrawl -he had written her title in capitals, she noticed, and Anne brought her hand up to her face, feeling a silly lovestruck grin on her lips. "Gone exploring," he continued, "Didn't want to wake you, when you look so-" here a blot of ink, where the author had spent a moment considering the right word, "incandescent!"

Anne blushed again. Laying back now, and letting this flush of heat take full effect. So this is what it meant to be loved; had the blood in her veins ever flowed until now? That throbbing, pulsing, pressing feeling; suddenly, joyously released. It came as a sudden flood, and it ran through every part of her. At once hot and sensuous; so that now she could barely hold her head up under the blaze of all that bliss; and yet also sweetly chilling; for how could it be in all this heat, that her skin was now covered in goosebumps?

The next cherry did not make it to her mouth, but was drawn, like a fingertip, along her throat and collarbone, and traced down her ribs. She let the quilt fall slowly to her hips, and the cherry laid a sweet trail around each breast -like the memory of a lover's tongue. Anne brought the fruit to her mouth again, and sucked it till it glistened; it was crushed a little in her mouth and she licked at a dark, red drip on her bottom lip, before circling the cherry around one nipple, then the other. It felt maddening, wondrous; the tips of her breasts so tender, almost bruised, after Gilbert's mouth had lingered there. The memory -of his tousled head bobbing slightly at her chest as he sucked and kissed her - playing over and over in her mind; as the cherry played on her body. Then, somehow, the uneaten fruit found its way to the floor, and her hands went further down her body; down, past her belly, past her hip, down, down below the arrow-straight, exacting lines of Mrs Rachel Lynde's prizewinning quilt.

**…**

Anne awoke again, glad of those little faded blinds at the window now, for the quilt was crumpled between her thighs, covering not much else at all; the rest of her laid bare upon the window seat. She wrapped the blanket round her, a small frown on her face. The light in the house was no longer casting the short, sharp shadows of midday, but the lazy, languorous ones of a sultry afternoon. And where was Gilbert?

She picked up the remains of her little breakfast, the petals of the poppies so blown that they hardly made the journey back to the kitchen -dropping satiny hearts where she walked. Anne tidied it all away, wondering vaguely what kind of meal might be made of the sketchy supplies left by Mrs Doctor Dave, and in Mrs Barry's hamper. Then two strong hands gripped her tightly about the waist, and pulled her back into his broad, hot chest. She felt his lightly whiskered jaw graze against her temple, and saw the damp, brown skin at his throat. He smelled of clean sweat from a hard day's work in the sun, of sea-salt, and something else, something almost sweet. Would that he might greet her like this, every day of their marriage!

"Good afternoon," Anne said, with a light little laugh.

"I think you mean good evening, Mrs Blythe!"

"No! Gilbert, it can't be-"

Her first day alone with her husband, and she had spent it sleeping. It certainly _would_ be Phil's turn to laugh.

"Not quite, it's almost five. Listen, Anne-girl, I've had a such a rare day, come back with me now, come and bathe-"

"Bathe?" Anne felt almost dizzy at the suggestion; and Gilbert spinning her round, lifting her up, and placing her on the table top hardly helped. The quilt fell to her hips once more. "Where?"

"Oh, I discovered this marvellous place, out by the grove of birch trees as you enter Four Winds. When you cross the road there's a small inlet where a fresh water stream feeds into the sea; and when I found it all I could think of was you. The pool there is small and sheltered, and the tide is coming in, so it will be good and deep. You must come, Anne..."

The last sentence to leave his lips seemed to peter out in slight confusion, as though he'd almost forgotten her name.

"Gil, what is it?"

Gilbert cupped his hand under her breast, "Anne, did I... did _I_ do that?"

Anne looked down to where Gilbert was looking, with a look of shocked concern on his face. Her nipples were smeared with scarlet juice from her luscious luncheon with the cherry! She hurriedly grabbed at the quilt, trying to cover herself. Her face as red as the stain on her chest.

"I must have dripped some juice on myself..." she murmured.

"You were supposed to _eat _them!" he laughed, and kissed her cherry stained mouth . "Though, actually," Gilbert added, as he bent his head down and brought her nipple to his mouth, "I think I like your idea better," and he popped it between his lips, like a fatly ripened fruit. Anne slid her hands along the edge of the table and then grasped at his hair; teasing the curls on his head, as he teased her -feeling slightly unsure if she had even woken at all.

Then, as he moved his mouth to her other breast, Anne caught sight of something herself, and she guided his head back up to her again. He stared at her now with a dreamy happiness, and she saw that his eyelids had the slightly swollen look of one who has not been to bed; it made his lashes seem longer, and he looked sweetly sleepy.

"Beautiful boy," Anne said, tenderly, "may_ I_ now ask you; what that dreadful mark is on your neck -that surely cannot be cherry juice?"

Gilbert brought his fingers straight to the spot, directly under his right ear. "Why this, Mrs Blythe? That bruise was made by you, by that unstoppable mouth of yours!"

"No-"

"Oh, my sweet girl, you haven't seen the half of it..." Gilbert tugged at his shirt now, and whipped it over her head. Another bruise, of a similar size and colour was there, between his collarbone and his neck; and there were pale pink lines scratched into his shoulder, and again just above his hip, "You should see my back!" he quipped.

"Gilbert, I-"

"I love you, too," and he kissed the top of her head. "Now, come bathe with me."

Anne brought his hands up to her lips, and kissed them lovingly, when another curious sight confronted her.

"I couldn't have made your fingers all red, tell me I'm not responsible for that?" Anne asked.

Gilbert whipped them away quickly, and wiped them on the front of this trousers, "Must have been when I picked those cherries," he answered her lightly, "now go get dressed, while I rustle up some grub."

Anne scampered up the stairs and into their bedroom. Neither the mattress nor the bedclothes had been returned to their place of origin, having been stored for now and without much care, onto the spare room floor. But the floor of this room was also strewn in a haphazard fashion; the contents from one of Anne's trunks thrown hastily about.

"Gil?" Anne called down the stairs, as she peered into her sewing box curiously, "Have you been mending and darning, while I was asleep?"

"Huh? Oh, yes," he called back, "the ah, buttons on my shirt, came a little loose last night."

"I never knew you could sew?" she responded, a slight incredulous tone in her voice.

He peered up at her from the stairwell, pulling his shirt down over his chest.

"Anne, I can sew a man back together. I can certainly sew on a button!"

Making dinner and sewing! Anne thought to herself with a self-congratulating smile; just wait till I tell Diana!

**...**

"The day was beautiful, and the way was beautiful..." Anne said merrily, as she sat on the soft patch of grass by the pool and began unrolling her stockings.

Gilbert was presently tucking into the meagre offerings he had thrown together; which consisted mainly of yesterday's cake, soft fruit and hard cheese. Anne smiled at him fondly, knowing she could not have come up with much better herself. He lay back now, one hand cradling his head, as he licked lemon icing from the other; watching Anne, as she drew her skirts over her bare legs.

"Why did you ever put those things on, Anne-girl?"

Anne gave him a queer little look.

"Habit, I suppose. Though it was your idea to get dressed; I'd be happy to float about in a sheet everyday."

Oh, that she would, thought Gilbert; very satisfied to be playing satyr to her dryad.

"But no one would ever know if you went about barelegged-"

"_You'd_ know, Gilbert Blythe! And that's enough for me!" Anne leant over him now, and licked a buttery peak of icing off his thumb.

Gilbert shivered. After the debauched delights of last night he had assumed that exquisite tension would finally be gone from him. But through the long, hot hours of the day, did it slowly, and inexorably, coil tightly inside him again. He wanted her; by the hour, the minute, and in every way.

"Time for a dip, I think." Gilbert stood up and peeled off his shirt again; Anne's lips pressing in wordless awe at the sight of those scratches upon his back. He threw his shirt upon her so it landed on her head.

"Anne Blythe, the look on your face; anyone would think you'd never seen a naked man before."

He kicked off his shoes, and unbuckled his belt; every movement he made seemed to remind him those sweet hours he had spent in bed with Anne. His body remembered too, and he turned away from her little.

"Oh, I've seen many a naked man," Anne said easily, the playful smile becoming a laugh, as she watched Gilbert almost trip over his own trousers. He disguised the wobble by dropping to his knees, and the look on his face was astonishment.

"When? WHO?"

Anne fell back into the grass herself, now giggling uncontrollably.

"Oh Gil, it's nothing shocking. Just at the swimming hole on the Wright's side of the Lake of Shining Waters -where you boys used to go."

"Which boys?"

"You, Fred..." the flush on her cheek growing stronger with every name she began to recount. "Er... Charlie ...Moody, Tommy, Rob..."

"And you _saw_ me?"

"I, I was never sure, we saw _something._ You were all swimming and jumping and diving around -it was hard to keep track of who was who- you all looked more like otters than anything else... this was a _long_ time ago, I was only fifteen-"

"Making me eighteen! Who else was there?"

"Well, Ruby of course -it was her idea- me and Diana, sometimes the Pye girls would _insist_ on following-"

"Sometimes! How many times did you do down to the hole?"

"We never went _down_ to the hole, you great goose! If we happened to be there and we happened to hear you, we sometimes went to watch a while. You know it wasn't that interesting, oh, and once," Anne burst into fresh laughter, "Reverend Allen was there. Only we didn't look _that _time," she said, trying to stifle a hearty guffaw, "we just recognised his voice."

"That's right, he liked to sing 'Figaro' when he bathed," Gilbert said, falling by her side on the grass.

"Oh, Gil!" Anne said, with a bright glint in her eye, "remember, when Mrs Harmon Andrews suggested we perform The Barber of Seville as an operetta, instead of our usual recitals? The _look_ on Mrs Allen's face -she'd obviously had a midnight swim or two with her husband!"

Gilbert rolled onto his stomach, watching his wife give in to almost painful rolls of laughter -was there anything Anne did that didn't make him love her even more?

She sighed, finally, and wiped her eyes. "But you know I rather envied her-"

"His singing wasn't _that_ good, Anne -whenever we saw him approach, the swimming-hole emptied fairly swiftly," said Gilbert, dryly.

Anne rolled her eyes, "I envied Mrs Allen her _freedom! _We girls were never allowed near the swimming-hole. All those baking hot days, in all those stiff, starched up clothes-"

"Like these ones?" Gilbert asked, fingering the collar at her throat. He realised now, in his rush to see Anne in that little chemise, he had missed the pleasure of undressing his bride. Anne looked up at him, recognising that look in his eyes; she made a small nod; and he began to slowly, carefully unbutton her.

When the last little mother-of-pearl button came away in his hands, he opened her blouse slowly and saw the much sturdier metal fastenings of her corset. He smoothed his hands over the stiff, satin faced fabric; feeling Anne's body fluttering inside, like a tiny bird in his hand.

"You need to pull it together, so the little metal loops pass over the buttons-" Anne began.

"It looks fairly straightforward," Gilbert responded. He was remembering the times he had removed and cut these garments from women at the hospital; though nothing could induce him to say this to Anne. She noticed a pensive look pass over his face.

"What is it, Gil?" Anne asked him.

"I was thinking about how you can bear to wear such a thing?" he replied. It was opened now, and the familiar and very lovely shape of his wife in a little chemise, lay breathing softly before him.

"I don't have a choice, anymore than you have a choice to wear a tie!"

"Let's not then, let's -if we can help it at all- let's not be bound by these things; at least while we honeymoon. I want to put my arms around you, Anne, and feel that it's you underneath my hands."

"You are positively scandalous-"

"But will you?"

"I was the one who wanted to go about in a sheet all day, remember?"

Gilbert stood up then, and slid down his underpants, kicking them to his pile of clothing, and then launching off the grassy bank into the water. Anne loved to see how comfortable he was in his body; there was no shyness or awkwardness, he moved and lived as though he knew who he was. Anne knew immediately then, it _had_ been Gilbert she had so admired at the swimming hole; though she had not recognised his face -they were all quite far away, and with their hair flattened and darkened in the water it had been hard to distinguish them- it was the way he carried his body, even then, which made him seem in every way; beautiful.

He dove down now, and when he emerged a short time later had a questioning look on his face. He swam over to the edge of the pool again, smoothing his hair back, before resting his arms lightly against the grassy bank. Sweet, clear water dripped over his face and down his neck, and ran over the muscles in his arms -he was, _he_ _was; _beautiful!

"Anne, you're not undressed yet," Gilbert said, "the water is unbelievably good."

Anne unfastened her skirts and shuffled them down her legs. She stood up shyly, in her drawers and chemise, and looked at him.

"I don't have a costume-"

"It may have escaped your notice, Anne, but neither do I."

It had definitely _not_ escaped Anne's notice. She went over to him and sat at the edge of the bank, dipping her legs into the water. It felt velvet soft against her skin, and fresh rather than cold. She had decided she was going to wear her underwear; it was terribly improper, but on a twilit deserted shore she felt fairly certain her immodesty would go unremarked upon. But then Anne felt the water touch her skin, saw her husband dive amongst it freely -as she had never been able to do- and decided, now, to remove everything, too. She stood up again and threw off her remaining garments, and jumped headlong into the pool.

**...**

So began the delectable joys that only swimming by the light of a moon can bring; water splashing like starlight; water caressing every inch and intimate part of one's body; water anointing the swimmer with intoxicating beauty -eyes are brighter, larger; lips moist, skin silken, limbs weightless and glowing. The ducking and splashing turn to fingertip flurries; and then to embraces, where legs can wrap as freely as arms; and kisses once diluted in the wash of waves, become stronger and more heated; as though needing, now, a place to anchor, a place to stand firm. A place that could hold them as strongly as they held each other.

Anne was lifted onto the banks of the pool, the damp leaves of grass springy and ticklish under her shining, wet skin. She leaned back on her hands and arched her back; coming back into her body, feeling and loving its strength and its flex. Gilbert's chin nestled into a little cradle where her two knees pressed together. Gazing in disbelief that the lovely, glistening goddess before him was real; was his wife; was _Anne_.

He slid his hands over her ivory smooth thighs, his face dividing those demure little knees, and then began kissing them. Anne felt his whiskers prickle against her soft inner thighs -and felt wild speculation now pricking inside her. His hands were at her hips, pulling her imperceptibly closer to him; her legs inching wider and wider apart.

"Gil..." she shivered; her skin, her blood, every part of her becoming more aware -as it always had when she said his name. "Gil, what are you doing?"

She felt the tip of his nose then -the softest, almost untraceable touch- upon the wet curls between her legs. Gilbert's breath was hot against her when he answered.

"Discovering goldmines..." he murmured softly, and drew his tongue upon her; it was the tiniest movement, and then -oh was he really, could she really, did such bliss even exist in the world?- kissed softly and deeply, the most tender, secret heart of her. At first Anne could only press her hands against the back of his head, but soon -or was it hours later?- she fell against the cool, soft grass, and Gilbert loved her as the water had loved her; as water made into a man.

She was sweet, silken, and so open; Gilbert need only lift his hips from the edge of the pool and enter her -the way she now grasped roughly at his neck and pulled at his hair, said as much; that she wanted more than his tongue inside her. Her thighs pressed firmly against his ears, yet even then he could easily discern the sounds of her; growing stronger -moaning, gasping- until the loveliest series of ahhs shot from her mouth and entered the night; and then- she was laughing! She was laughing, and pulling herself up, and pulling him up with her; and he was stung with volts of desire when she kissed him now; tasting herself on his lips. Gilbert felt he would bore a hole into the bank of the pool!

She fell against the ground again, panting and shiny eyed, and Gilbert hoisted himself up next to her; the air relievedly cool around his torso.

"Oh, sweet, sweet boy!" Anne declared to the stars, "I never, _ever_ expected something like that..."

"I never _ever_ expected to make you laugh!"

"Oh, I couldn't help myself ...this image of Fred came into my mind-"

"Fred Wright?!" So she _had_ seen him at the swimming-hole; no-one, not even a boy very much in love with a girl, could fail to appreciate the astonishing sight of a naked Fred. "Dare I ask why?" Gilbert asked.

"Oh, no... I didn't mean... I wasn't... It was _me_, you see? All those noises I was making... I couldn't help it, it was just so -and _you_ were so- and then I could hear myself and I remembered... I didn't _want_ to; it just came to me... something Diana said about Fred-"

"I'm listening," Gilbert said, a dry little smile playing on his lips.

"Oh, well," Anne suddenly felt as if she shouldn't say anymore, though she knew that she would, "he makes these noises... when he and Diana... and I..."

"I see," Gilbert said then, biting back a laugh of his own. The water trickled between his thighs, and he shifted them restlessly. Anne still wore a look of unimagined ecstasy, and though her body reacted to the growing coolness of the earth and sky, she was not yet aware of it. But under the moonlight Gilbert could see her skin was covered in goosebumps, and she made the tiniest little shivers. He sat up now, and reached for the hamper, laying a bath sheet about her.

"Oh, Gilbert, is it really time to go home? I don't think I can manage to get my limbs back into my clothing."

"Then don't get dressed," he said -for he only meant to undress her again.

And as the moon pulled the tide way once more, the two scurried laughingly -like spirits of night- through branches and foliage, up to the road, and back to their house of dreams.

**...**

Anne lay back in the water, as white, gauzy foam lapped about her breasts and knees, and up the coppery lip of the bath. The soft heat of the fire behind her flicked over her hair as she draped it over the side, tiny drips from the longest strands making a small dark spot on the rug. Her cheeks felt scarlet, and so were the tips of her breasts, that broke the surface of the water like little floating roses. She reached outside the bath for her glass of red-current wine, knocking over the tin jug; the contents of which had recently been emptied in hot, fragrant quantities over her head, by the man curled lazily on the window seat opposite her.

"It's here," Gilbert said, setting the pitcher upright and handing her the glass. He poured himself another little beaker and resumed his place by the window. The little curtains had been pulled closed -with the dextrous use of his toes!- the wine, the water and the lovely, long day, laying him low; so that even the blink of an eye felt like too much of an effort. If it wasn't for the delectable sight of Anne in the copper bath, he would most certainly have fallen into a deep and satisfying sleep long ago.

Gilbert now stretched out his long, lean body, and ran his fingers through his damp curls. Anne had insisted he be first in the bath, having gone to the most trouble to heat the pots of water and fill it up, whilst she searched for tiny sprigs of rosemary and lavender to scent it; and it was a sweet, heady perfume she poured in great hot waves over his head and down his back. Gilbert had sighed and sat back, his lashes laying in black, spiky fans over his pink cheeks. And then Anne had been very liberal, and extremely thorough with her little cake of soap. He was satisfied; so deeply, and in every way.

In every way, except one.

It had been a curiously wonderful gift -a very Anne-ish gift- to forgo those wedding night expectations; to be free to reveal themselves to each other slowly, honestly, unashamedly. There was nowhere on her person that Anne forbade him go; she seemed to thrill at the discoveries he made just as much as he did. And wandered her own hands -and her mouth, and the silken lengths of her ruddy hair- all over him, with an appetite that never seemed to diminish.

Yet, in all these unimagined pleasures, there was for Gilbert, the tiny corner of a thought, that would pierce through this mantle of bliss she covered him in. The little words in his head asking nothing more than: Now? It is to be now?

Now- when Anne would look at him, and in her eyes he would see, what he hadn't yet seen; one where she was not lost in the thrall of feeling -of his or hers- but one that spoke only to his heart; one that came straight from hers, and asked him -told him- _now._

He knew that feeling, he had experienced it himself only last night; the strongest, deepest need to be inside his wife; to possess her and be possessed by her. It lay inside him, and it grew with every hour he spent with her; till he felt certain that each time Anne looked into his eyes she could not help but see it written plainly there.

Gilbert looked at Anne now; she was rolling the rim of her glass across her lips and tongue. Was she remembering, was she waiting, was she intent on driving his desire for her to maddening, unendurable levels? But there was no intent, she had never been intent; it was only that Gilbert Blythe had never been able to look upon Anne without wanting something more -in her wincyette sleeves, or naked and slippery in a deep, copper bath- Gilbert had always, would always, want Anne.

He closed his eyes for just a moment, the look of his wife still there in his thoughts: the rhythm of his heart fell to quiet regular beats, his breaths became soft, and his limbs and his eyelids were weighted, heavy and still. He slept now, and in dreams, Anne was there.

Anne licked the last little drops of wine from her glass. She had supposed its addition to the hamper was the work of Marilla (for Mrs Barry would never have countenanced such a thing!) -though it was in fact put there by the sly and knowing hand of Rachel Lynde. She placed the sticky cup on the floor then, and rose from the bath, like Venus from a shell. And as she wrapped her body and her hair in the fire-warmed towels, she looked lovingly at her husband; expecting with every movement she made that he would waken, would see her, would whisk her towel from her still damp limbs, and carry her off to bed.

When he had loved her with his mouth and his lips and his tongue, this glorious eve, Anne had wanted nothing more than for Gilbert to now -yes, yes, now- make love to her, there on the bank and under the stars. If he had but stopped and looked at her, he would have seen her urgent plea to him:

I'm not afraid, I want you inside me. Now ...now ...now.

But he didn't stop, and in her nervousness, her hesitance, she had laughed! She had burst out laughing into the night -with her husband's face between her thighs- and told him she was thinking of Fred Wright?! Anne was as perplexed as she was infuriated with herself -could nothing ever go smoothly for her? Were scrapes and mistakes to be ever hers, even in her marriage bed? Was there even a marriage bed; had she not rejected it out of hand on their first night together?

For there he was, this perfect, patient, adoring man; sleeping the sleep of the spent and exhausted; on a window seat! Curled up and curly haired, in a crisp white nightshirt; her own beautiful boy, gone to the realm of dreams. She kissed his brow lightly, and took the tobacco striped quilt that had been tossed upon their armchair, and tucked it lovingly around him.

Did she hope; as her hands lingered at his waist, and she kissed him again on an especially ticklish spot, that he might waken? Did she smile; when he pulled the blanket tightly about him and nestled deeper into the cushions? She did hope, and then, she did smile. She loved him, she wanted him, but she would wait. Anne may not have always understood herself; but she understood this beauteous world she was borne of.

The tide would always rise again. And Anne would rush to meet it.

**...**

**Sorry but you were never going to a get a wham bam thank you Anne, from me! But I hope you come along for the very last chapter...**

raindropcatcher: it used to be a bowl of strawberries until I read your last snatch of sunshine ^^

alinya: she's going to tie him up in embroidery floss next!

synnchick: I hope your happy little sighs keep coming

godons: is that a heatwave or are you blushing?

insubfreak: thank you for your comments -especially for introducing a new word to my lexicon – I laughed my a- off! Hope you like the little "goldmines" reference ^^

jenn: that's what makes AoGG so loved and for so long -all the characters are so funny, ridiculous and passionate & I wanted to make sure that even in M times they stay that way

amybf: hooray for the bravos! It really mattered to me that they remain Anne and Gil thru the "smutty bits" so thank you for thinking I pulled it off


	12. Chapter 12

**M: this chapter contains explicit sexual content, that is _very_ explicit, _very_ sexual, and hopefully leaves you, dear reader, _very_ content!**

**As always, with love and gratitude to L.M. Montgomery, everything is hers, only this idea is mine.**

**Here is the quote that started all this writing in the first place...**

"_Do you know when and where I'd like to be married, if I could? It would be at dawn... with a glorious sunrise, and roses blooming in the gardens; and I would slip down and meet Gilbert and we would go together to the heart of the beech woods -and there, under the green arches that would be like a splendid cathedral, we would be married."_

_chapter three, the Land of Dreams Among; from Anne's House of Dreams_

**Chapter 12: A Bed of Roses**

Anne stirred suddenly in the small hours of morning; a jolt shooting through her body so vigorously, that her first thought was that she had fallen out of bed. She stretched out her arms -yes, those were floorboards she felt underneath her fingers, but this was no hard floor she lay on- remembering now that she was sleeping on a mattress in the spare room. There was nowhere to for her to fall; so how to account for this feeling inside her?

It felt like a wave pulling her into herself, only to beat upon empty shores, where what she really wanted -she realised now- was to collide bodily with something -or someone. The strangest, sweetest throb pulsed through her -she felt nothing so much as a beating heart with limbs- limbs that pressed and slid over themselves, wanting something to press against; wanting to be held down, to be caught. There were inexplicable butterflies in her head- and not those freely flitting from flower to flower- but pinned wide, pressed down, possessed, and desired.

Oh, this wasn't her, this wasn't her at all; and yet, Anne knew, it was. And there was a frustration there, and a crossness; for wanting and for feeling this way. But she did. _She did_. Among all the things she knew of herself – and the few other things she suspected- it seemed that there was a part of her that was made of this; that was made for this; that longed so wholly and bodily- and that the longing in her felt like this. She squeezed her thighs against this pulse; but denying it made it only more intense. It was unrelievedly exquisite, and her fingers, thighs and hands weren't enough -_she_ wasn't enough! It made her more exasperated; in the face of all this devouring want.

It was now Anne saw, outside the door, a small circle of light slipping into the room; and remembered that if Gilbert was not sleeping next to her -and he most certainly was not- then he was still downstairs curled up on the window seat. She was standing before she knew her feet had moved, thinking only of getting to him...

It seemed impossible that she even knew how to make her legs hold her up; but she walked to the door now, and in the light she saw, hanging from the large iron hook where her guests might keep a hat; _her bridal gown_. Though only part of it, the stiff, structured undergarments were missing, with just the embroidered silk sheath -like folded gossamer wings- upon the wooden hanger. To complete this surprise, Anne noticed that a small piece of paper had been pinned to the neck of her dress; where the amethyst jewel had been. And on it, in her husband's hand she read, uncomprehendingly: Marry Me.

_Marry him?_ But she had, amongst all their dearest friends and family, in the orchard of her old home. She had married him -she was his wife ...was she his wife? She still had not been loved by him, the way a husband loves a wife. Was Gilbert telling her he couldn't wait; was Gilbert telling her, _now_? Had he been here, just minutes before, loving her silently, secretly, in her sleep, to make her wake this way; to make her want this way?

Though Anne hoped this to be true, she knew it was not. This feeling was not about what Gilbert did to her; no matter how easy, how guiltless this answer made her feel. The unstoppable deluge rising inside her, belonged only to Anne.

She dashed down the stairs to the sitting room, and in the gloom she saw the copper bath, two sticky glasses, and the cinders of a dead fire. Nothing more, nothing welcoming, nothing warm. No Gilbert. She felt as though someone had taken the cold water from last night's bath and poured it over her head!

Unsure what else to do Anne returned to her room, her footfalls the very opposite of what they had been only one minute before. She spied the light outside her door; it seemed a curious choice of Gilbert's; a heavy storm lantern, not made for indoor use. But that did not begin to compare with the mystery of her wedding dress hung upon the back of the door; complete with a note, as short on words as it was on reason.

Very well, Gilbert Blythe, Anne thought to herself, if you want me to marry you in the middle of the night, I will marry you. But I need to find you first.

She lifted her nightgown over her head, and slipped the ivory silk dress over herself. No corsets, no garter, no petticoats -just as she had promised him yesterday evening -just Anne in her white silken sheath. She was wondering if she should unweave the thick, coppery braids that hung past her shoulders, when she felt something scratch at her foot. Anne lifted the hem and saw another little square of paper, pinned to its edge. She stepped to the lamp light to make out its message; which said, in the same hand, and just as obliquely: Follow the Roses.

A revelation of needle thin fineness pierced through Anne now; stopping abruptly at her very centre, so that she almost doubled over with the impact. Were they butterflies she had imagined before, or the fat, velvet petals of a thousand roses; soft, fragrant and bursting open. Anne felt pummelled by feelings not altogether pleasant; she was suddenly weak, hot and anxious. She wanted to curl up like a little flower-bud and find sleep again. But it was impossible, she would never find sleep; she had to find Gilbert.

Anne stood at the open door of their House of Dreams, one hand clutching the heavy brass lantern, the other the hem of her dress; looking out into the night. It was that same indeterminate colour that she had seen through the gable window of her little bedroom, the night the Blakes had come. The kind of sky where one couldn't tell whether it was night or morning that approached. And she stood, like the moon, like the sun, unable to decide which way to go. The sea seemed to speak to her, calling her to to come out; with a voice that promised neither pleasure nor safety, but adventure. Yet a pine-scented breeze pressed her back, her dress slipping sweetly about her in delicate little flurries, like the memories of yesterday.

It was now that Anne saw it, down their little cobbled path, on the little white gate; a rose. A deep pink rose tucked into the latch. And it seemed so familiar to her, such a part of her, she felt as though her face was there already, breathing in its heady scent, touching those petals against her lips and her cheek; as though it already lay within her hand. Her feet were bare and her eyes were the colour of the the sky. Anne closed the door, and followed the rose.

Soon her arms were full of them, the wild tangled flowers of an overgrown garden, tight, hothoused buds with gleaming stems, tiny leafy sprays, and lotus-like blooms with golden centres. The hem of her dress had long been left to drag upon the ground; Anne lost in the beam of her lantern, eagerly seeking the roses, and, -she hoped- the way to Gilbert. She had travelled down the side of the road that lead out of Four Winds, following the path the two of them had made just the evening before. And as she neared the thickening undergrowth that hid the entrance to their secret pool, the sea called out to her again, and she felt its fine mist lick her skin.

Anne held her light out over the shrubs and small trees eagerly, expectantly; searching for the next flower to add to her bouquet. Gilbert would be there, she knew, waiting for her at their pool. And she clutched the stems to her breast, excitedly; never noticing how they pricked and scratched through the flimsy silk of her gown. The bright beam of her lantern painted a sun over the greenery, but there was not another rose to be seen. The path seemed to have ended, and she stood, waiting; for Gilbert must make his appearance now.

The lantern began to feel heavy in her hand. She dropped it by her side, peering into shadow. The sky was now the colour of the sea in a storm, yet all was still. It was eerily still, and Anne stood in its stillness and felt she was the only thing that moved there, the only thing that breathed. As though her breath alone made the fine leaves behind her rustle; for there was no wind. And there was no Gilbert.

She wandered back over the road to the grove of birch trees; the lantern held out before her again, like an amulet against the dark. The slender trunks, in delicate dresses of white and cream and gold, shone prettily under the lantern-light; and there, in the crook of a branch, like the buttonhole on a groom's lapel, was one white rose.

She put the lantern down and grasped the flower to her, and, as she held it, that needle fine feeling, that drew achingly within her, now seemed to ignite like a fuse. The lantern was left by the road side, as rays of gold passed through a slate coloured sky; and she went, with her feet touching down on green leaf and red earth, into the woods.

Anne walked a small meandering path -it was hardly even that- just the clearest way between the birch trees, who lined the way for her like bridesmaids; the white glow of a rising sun, touching upon her with a veil of light. There were no more roses to show the way now- for if Gilbert knew one thing, it was that this sylvan maid could find her way through trunk and branch without the need of any guide, but the one in her own heart.

She soon spied a clearing, with a gigantic tree -was it a strange sort of willow that grew in its midst?- so large, it obscured the light for anything that might have grown below its tremendous spreading branches. And when she entered, the space seemed alive with electric currents of fragrant air; spicy, heady, musky, sweet, and Anne felt as though she swam in it -wanting above all things at this moment, to pull her dress over her head and dive into it.

It was then she discerned what the lengths that fell from the branches were made of; they were not whips of willow at all, but roses! Roses in long, heavy garlands, strung from the boughs of a giant beech tree. And there framed by its two longest branches, a simple arch made of twists of hazel, and carpeted below with the petals of what seemed like a thousand blooms. Her own bouquet fell from her hands as she ran to them, grasping the plush ropes of red, pink, apricot, yellow and white -so fragile they dropped their petals at the slightest touch- and so open; the smell of them was the very Garden of Eden! When she lifted one up she saw then what she supposed was Gilbert, and an iridescent chill went through her body as she stepped toward him, only to find it was his wedding suit, placed on a hanger that hung on a branch.

She searched about the borders of the birches, wishing for the lantern now; even as the sun reached its first beams to the sky -seeming to pull itself hand over hand into the new day. Where was he, her darling man; who was husband, and best friend, and lover? Who knew the circuits and rhythms of the body, and the cycles and the rhythms of the Island; her accomplished doctor, her beloved farm boy?

In the years to come they would sing many songs to their children, but for one would they tear their eyes away from their babies, and for the smallest moment look -like the boy and girl of yesterday- at each other.

_For where is the boy, who should be tending his sheep? He's under the haystack fast asleep..._

Gilbert lay against the thick trunk of the beech tree, whose ancient, gnarled roots held him like a child. He was that curly haired boy, in his nightshirt, dreaming of a girl. A girl who stood before him now, her hands upon her lips -with a thousand ways to speak her love for him, and no words to say it.

She was on her knees in front of him; one small, trembling hand grazing lightly upon his brow, down his stubbly jaw, and over his sweet-lipped mouth. Gilbert stirred, and in the growing light Anne saw his eyes open, first with pupils black and drowsy, and then pin small, as he recognised the woman who was waking him now.

"Anne! I'm sorry, I must have fallen asl-"

She pressed her fingers down to stop his words, then drew her hands around his neck, guiding him closer to her. Their mouths brushed against each other hotly; Anne panting through just opened lips, that quivered against his, as she breathed with him. Gilbert reached for her now, his hands sliding all over her silken body; feeling Anne's hips, ribs, and breasts writhing and aroused under her molten, white dress. She moved into him with such urgency, it was almost panic; as though she was trying to take back something that belonged to her; something that was inside him.

Anne yanked at his night shirt, peeling it over his shoulders and tossing it into a low hanging branch; and Gilbert was naked and hard and wanting her; pulling from her the ivory slip -it was barely over her head before he began frantically kissing her breasts, and kneading them roughly in his hands. Anne crushed her mouth against him now, silencing the moans and the sighs that rang from her body, and Gilbert felt them reverberate throughout his own; felt how much Anne wanted him- and it filled him and fed him- he seemed to take strength from her. Instead of doubt he felt powerful; felt he could love her into the next dawn.

She knelt between his legs, kissing and biting his cheek, his earlobe, his neck, then bending over his chest -she flicked a braid over her shoulder impatiently- to kiss and suck one nipple, now shifting one leg over his, to lavish her mouth upon the other. And then all at once her legs were around him, and she felt how long and firm he was, pressed hard and upright between their bellies. They clung to each other for the longest moment, Gilbert's hands pressed tightly upon the damp skin on her back, and then; she felt his fingers slide up slowly, to the tiny curls at her nape, where her hair divided into those thick braids.

They stared into each other; not just as eyes meet eyes, but heart meets heart. Gilbert saw it now, saw that look in Anne, and he knew she could see it in him. The hint of a grin -it was the sweetest, softest smile- appeared at the corners of his mouth, and his heart beat strong and fast for her. Anne drew herself up slightly, and kissed his eyelids -he closed them at the touch of her lips- and the feel of her mouth was like a blessing.

Their breaths became quiet again, and Anne began to move her body, in shy, curious movements, up, and then down; and as she did Gilbert felt her -so warm, slick and meltingly soft- rubbing over the length of him. Then she knelt up higher still, to nuzzle into his tousled hair; and shuddered when her nipples brushed over Gilbert's lips; his quivering, hot little breaths like air upon a fire.

Anne was sliding down him now, her eyes were closed; and Gilbert watched her, waiting to see what she meant to do. Then he felt her, felt the downy heat of her body hover above him. He wanted to be still, wanted to wait for her, but he could not resist now -when he was _so_ close- to lift his hips toward her, only a little, and then, a little more- and he groaned softly when he touched her -she was so wet and so open- and he drove his hands up her back again, and away from her own hips, such was the temptation to pull her onto him. Gilbert closed his eyes, breathing deeply -the words _Anne_ and _please_ in each silent exhalation. And when he opened them again, she was staring at him; that open, artless stare that went straight into him; the look that made him reach for her long red braids all those years ago.

"Gilbert," she said, simply.

"Anne," was his answer.

She took her hand off his shoulder and guided him to her waist. His other hand followed, and they cupped her hips; his thumbs grazing the smooth hollows where bone becomes belly. Then Anne slowly, carefully, drew herself down; her eyes never leaving his, and in the dawn light the green hues in them glowed like the first tiny leaves of Spring. There was a smile that played on her mouth now, and then she pressed her lips together -the way she always did when she gave someone her rapt attention- and he entered her, sweetly, slowly; stopping momentarily -both drawing in their breath- at the unexpected feeling of tightness and pressure, and the rather more expected one, of excitement and joy.

He was inside her now, and it felt to Anne as though somehow she was inside him too, holding his heart; his beautiful, courageous, generous heart; he was giving it to her, and it beat inside her as surely as her own did for him. And his eyes, those lovely, loving hazel eyes, with the same look that he had the day she said yes to him -a beautiful mix of relief and enduring love.

She shifted her knees infinitesimally, and he lifted his bottom from the leaf litter for a moment -he would have twig and stick imprints on it for days; but what was that compared with the paradise he found himself in now. Anne was a paradise, and never more than now. Naked in the dawn light, grey eyes shining, long, white legs astride his hips; loving him completely. She shifted her knee again -the movement sent unending chills of pleasure throughout his body- and he steadied her with his hands, quietly and firmly, as if he would steady himself. Every part of Gilbert wanting to move now, and yet also wanting this moment, when he touched inside her for the first time, to last for as long as it possibly could. If Anne kept shifting her hips like that, however, it might not be for long.

"Anne, is it ...are you alright?"

Anne swallowed hard, before she answered -Gilbert could feel her do so, and swallowed hard himself.

"No, I... no, Gil, I'm not alright," she said quietly. He might have been frightened by her words if the sound of her voice didn't ring so clear and true. "I'm, I'm, I don't know what I am... I never expected this to be so... and for it to feel so..."

Anne hugged him close to her again, pressing her knees tightly to his sides, Gilbert had believed he could go no deeper into her, but as she moved then and wrapped herself around him, he knew how much further he might. Her lips were in his hair, and she shivered almost violently against him, then drew back, as if she knew now what she wanted to say.

He looked at her; strands of Anne's hair had come loose from her braids, like little threads of gold whipping softly at her cheek. She seemed to Gilbert as though she was made of sunlight, and her face was pure happiness.

"I love you," Anne said. It was said in such a way, as though she had never truly loved till now, never known true love till now. "I love you," she said again, "I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you-" her voice broke, and she fell against him, and whispered against his cheek, "I love you. I love you. I love you..."

Gilbert wrapped his arms round her tightly, holding her as firmly and sweetly as she held him inside her. She felt small and powerful in his arms, and when he felt her heart beat wildly against his chest, he suddenly wanted to cry.

"I love you," it was Anne who cried now, "I love you, I love you..." He smoothed his hands along her back in comforting strokes, and felt her muscles quicken against him, as she tried to catch her breath. "I love you, I love you..." Anne looked at him once more, and though her voice had quietened, her eyes still declared it with each tear that fell.

"I love you, Gilbert Blythe," Anne hiccupped.

He held her in his arms, squeezing her tenderly, "I know it," he said softly, "now let me love you."

Gilbert gripped Anne tighter now, one hand sliding under her bottom, the other then steadying himself against one of the thicker tree roots that surrounded them; then in one swift, strong movement, he rocked up to his knees, carrying Anne in his arms. He meant to stay inside her, never wanting to be parted from her body for one second -yet when he lay her down on the carpet of petals and slipped out of her, he wasn't entirely sorry -for it would only give him the intense and miraculous pleasure of entering Anne again.

He balanced his body just inches from her, looking down at his wife -she was radiant in the rosy light of morning. And the way she looked up at him and waited, the way her chest rose and fell with anticipation, filled him with such a joyous love, Gilbert felt every part of him must surely burst with such abundance.

He kissed her forehead lightly, Anne smiled and closed her eyes, as his adoring mouth rained little kisses over her face and neck. How was it that such a tiny gesture had ever been enough for him; for all those years, when the only parts of her body he had touched and seen were those that showed at the collar and the cuff of her dress? The memory of all that longing rushed through him, as he placed the next little kiss just under her ear; yet here was Anne shivering just as deeply now, as she had the first day he had touched her that way.

As she turned her head, and breathed the sweet scent of petals round her face, she felt Gilbert's body brush against her; his skin felt cool, but when she brought her hands to him he seemed to burn inside. She felt the muscles of his shoulders, working hard to hold him just the barest distance from herself; and that strength, that mass, made her thighs part wider, and her breasts rise up against his. Her nipples brushed softly upon his own -how wonderful that a woman's body was so much like a man's. But more than that, how much more wonderful that it was not -Anne becoming very aware, now, of the mass and strength, that had been for those raw and beautiful minutes, living inside her. She rubbed her thighs upon his, and drew the heel of one foot across his bottom and down the back of his leg. Then her arms fell back around her head, upon the petals where they lay -and they felt like little kisses on her skin.

Gilbert leant on one arm and trailed his hand along her body, stopping at her thigh, and then whispering it between her legs. His fingers entered her gently, and he watched as Anne began to writhe and undulate toward him, knowing now that she wanted him to touch her more vigorously, more deeply. She felt so plush, it was all he could think of to be inside her again; to be held in that close, hot, loveliness. He rubbed himself against her now; wanting to slide into her as slowly and gently as she had enveloped him; and he gripped hard at her waist so that he might control his movements.

Anne sighed with longing when she felt him, arching her hips toward him impatiently; and when he heard her, and saw her move like that, Gilbert groaned, knowing what he was about to do. He pulled her toward him urgently now, and thoughts of gentleness gave way, as he pushed deeply and firmly into her. With each movement vowing he would slow down, and then as he withdrew against her, unable to stop another thick, penetrating thrust. Anne, at first with her legs wrapped tightly around him, felt them fall wider and wider apart each time he buried himself into her; meeting each throb in her body with an even stronger one of his own. His face, and his eyes -with a wild, unbound look she had never seen before- thrilled her inside, just as his body did; to see him so lost in his ecstasy for her.

She kissed him greedily, and in their kisses were the sounds of pleasure, so intense they sounded almost like pain. It did hurt, and it was a gorgeous agony. There were no soft sighs now, no incandescence, this was not of air, but of sea -and it pounded against her and she rose -like a tide, like a wave- colliding with him again and again, till Anne was breathless and speechless.

Words came then, though not from her, but from Gilbert; calling to her, as though trying desperately to find his way back, not to her body, but to her heart. His voice was cracked, raw and desperate, as he called her name out now-

"Oh, Anne! Anne! Anne! Anne! Anne..."

And then quieter, shyer; shivering into her sweat sheened neck, and murmuring the only thing he had ever known was true, "I love you, Anne, I love you..."

"I love you, Gil," she whispered shakily, and she felt him smile against her cheek. He lay against her, hot and covered in sweat; she felt the full weight of him, pressing her into the ground, and she rejoiced in it -never wanting his body to leave hers.

His eyes opened and he looked at her quietly, she was staring out at the leaves above them, the sunlight like little stars peeping through the foliage. He stroked her cheek and kissed her again, and then turned his face and watched with her, the passage of the sun arcing over them through the tree. They were both so still, that when Anne shifted her hip against him, and stretched out her leg it seemed another day had passed. He took his weight off her, leaning against his arm, and she was stirred from her reverie and looked at him with a beaming smile.

"Are you... are you..." he seemed to have lost the power of speech; as though his mouth was made for nothing but adoring the body of his wife. But he did not seem sorry about it -if Anne needed to find the words to say to him now, how she felt, she need only have looked at Gilbert's flushed and sated face.

"Yes, oh yes, I'm so deliciously happy..." she shifted her leg again, "it's only that I have those dreadful pins and needles in my foot again."

It was not exactly the gracious declaration Anne had imagined she might say to her lover at such a moment; and her cheeks went as pink as the roses that drifted around them.

Gilbert carefully rolled his body from hers, with the tiniest of shivers, and onto the carpet of petals. He realised now she must have had them when they first made love by the trunk of the tree, and he smiled to himself.

"I'm sorry you found me asleep, Anne," he said now, thinking of the things that had not gone quite so perfectly for him either.

Anne rolled onto her elbow and looked at him, "I'm not. It was the most wonderful surprise, Gil. What you made here, for me, for us, I can't tell you what it means to me -at least not in words," she added shyly. "I am forever in awe at your singular ability for discovering trees! Was this what you were doing yesterday, while I slept the day away?"

"And here are the hands to prove it," he grinned, holding one out to show her. The colours of all those petals staining his fingers a vibrant pink. "It wasn't exactly as I'd hoped, I wanted vast bouquets of them all around us, but the roses were so overly ripe they kept falling apart in my hands."

Anne's face was now even redder than his fingers, understanding all too well why those blooms yielded so utterly to his touch.

"But where, _how_, did you find them all?"

"I just walked behind you for a day or so. Didn't you know that flowers spring up with every step you make upon this earth?" Gilbert's face all seriousness, but his eyes glinted playfully, and Anne knew she would not get her answer today.

Anne peeled a crimson petal from her elbow and gingerly stood up; she had been pressed so thoroughly into the soft red earth, it wouldn't have surprised her in the slightest if she did begin to sprout leaves and roots. She walked awkwardly about for a moment, stomping her foot. There was a rush of wetness then that surprised her, and she quickly knelt by the foot of the hazel arch, with a queer little look on her face.

Gilbert pulled himself up, and knelt next to her, "Pins and needles all gone?" he asked, and went to peel another yellow petal off her shoulder, "You should see yourself, Anne Blythe, you look as though you'd got the strangest case of scarlet fever -perhaps I should make a thorough study of you," and he laughed, suggestively.

Anne took his hand and placed it on her lap; she seemed suddenly still and small, and her eyes were wide.

"Gil, I think I'm bleeding-"

"Oh, Anne, no! I mean, it does happen ...but can you, can you actually feel it?"

Anne shifted her knees apart and looked down, her thighs glistened strangely, but there was no blood.

"You goose," Gilbert said, he might have wished for a better response, but the rush of relief made him careless, "that's from _me_!"

Anne was now well enough acquainted with Gilbert's body to know exactly what part of himself he was referring to; but she had not expected it to make a reappearance this way, and she said as much.

"I can still be made pregnant by you, can't I?" she continued. She looked so open and vulnerable right at this moment, Gilbert saw immediately how much the dream of motherhood meant to her; wondering if tonight there might be one less star in the sky.

"Well you know, my love, it might not happen right away-" He had that look again, this solemn doctorly face, and the eyes of an exasperating boy, "-things like this can take an awful lot of practice... But don't worry, _someone_ once told me we've got our _whole lives to get it right_..."

Anne pounced on him now, he fell back easily, and they lay there -her head at his shoulder, his chin on her head- and hearts pressed tight together. They looked up through the leaves of the grand old beech, illuminated with sunshine, that painted them both in a fresh golden light. Anne wondered if the storm lantern was still alight by the roadside, and hoped against hope, that some enquiring body wouldn't find it and then make an attempt to find them! She walked to the tree now, to retrieve their clothing; and as she shimmied her dress over her body the thought occurred, that she still had no idea what it was that woke her so violently in the night.

"How did you know I would come to you?" she asked Gilbert now, as he tugged his grey trousers over his hips. He looked at his wife, and felt that familiar wave of desire for her, growing stronger inside him again.

"I love the way that dress looks on you, Anne-girl, so light and lovely..." He meant more than that; the feel of her lithe body -her exquisite pointed breasts, that unexpectedly curvy bottom, under all that liquid silk- had melted him. His throat went dry at the mere memory of it.

She looked up at him, as he ran his fingers up her waist and cupped her breasts, playing over them with the flat of his palm with the merest, sweetest touch; that he knew -oh, how could he know this about her?- drove her especially frantic.

"How did you know?" she repeated, her hands were at his belt now.

Gilbert touched her cheek, and then took a braid in his hand and ran it lovingly down her long red hair.

"Because I know _you_, Anne. I always have."

The flowers they left in this secret spot; but the hazel arch was returned to the House of Dreams. Where Anne and Gilbert worked upon it through their sacred month together -when they were not eating, laughing, exploring or practicing- until one day; he took one end and she the other, and they moved the unwieldy object up their stairs, and into their bedroom. Where it became the brand new headboard for their big ol' bed.

**The End**

**Thank you for reading! Thank you for your encouragement!**

**I'm going to start some new stories now, though I won't be publishing for a while as I get my head around some new ideas. **

**But I will always be checking in to see if you have read or reviewed this work, so please continue to leave messages. You have given me so many ideas -I hope you noticed your influence- and cracked me up when I was feeling lost in a sea of words. **

**Heartfelt thanks to all my Anne Grrrrrls! (you know who you are)**

**p.s. Yes I know exactly how Gilbert produced all those roses -but the explanation didn't fit the flow of the story -I wonder, would you like to know too?**


End file.
